


Fire With Fire

by Lirillith



Category: Tiger & Bunny
Genre: Character Study, Complicated Relationships, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Fights, Fire, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Past Domestic Violence, Psychological Trauma, Violence, Work In Progress
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-10-18
Updated: 2014-07-14
Packaged: 2017-12-29 18:28:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 15
Words: 43,017
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1008613
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lirillith/pseuds/Lirillith
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nathan Seymour isn't normally one for grudges, but coming under suspicion of murder is where he draws the line, especially since he knows better than most how horrific death by burning really is.  When he and Lunatic face off, though, the simple fire-powered grudge match turns gradually into something else entirely.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This was begun in response to a prompt on the Tiger & Bunny kinkmeme: _Nathan normally isn't one for grudges -too much effort, too little reward- but he's still pretty pissed that Lunatic's actions nearly got him on the hook for murder, and that every time the bastard shows up, it causes uncomfortable whispering, because clearly all fire-fueled NEXTs are the same, right?_
> 
> _So, away from the show and the other heroes, Nathan privately issues a challenge somewhere he knows Lunatic will find it. Problem is, every time they get into their showdown match, something interrupts in the middle. As they continue to meet up to continue their unfinished fight, they start developing a weird sort of respect for each other's views, and things go interesting from there._
> 
> Things do indeed go interesting later, though the fic is not yet complete. I decided to work on editing it and de-anon it in hopes of jump-starting the ending.

Nathan Seymour made it a point to keep tabs on what the city was saying about him. It called for thick skin, but he had that. He had no intention of adjusting his behavior because of criticism; he just liked to know.

So when a blog entry defending him landed on his screen, he was more than a bit put out to realize he hadn't caught the original attack. He backtracked to the original.

Some opening summary of Lunatic's kills and attempted kills. The writer's bias was clear enough before he got to the meat of the entry: _Sure, it's great that Lunatic's taking out criminals that would merit the death penalty anywhere else in the country. But he's also offering a shield to any other fire-based NEXTs who want to get in on the act. Say Fire Emblem decides to start taking out criminals convicted under Stern Bild's ridiculously restrictive "hate" crime laws - it'd just be attributed to Lunatic!_

Scare quotes on "hate." Of course. He surveyed the blog briefly, but the writer's politics didn't concern him; he wasn't out to stop everyone from being wrong. It was the comment counts that were relevant to him, and the comments were full of agreement, tempered with occasional debates; some of the commenters felt vigilantism was just distracting citizens from the flaws in the justice system, others that what the world needed was more Lunatics. Nathan sighed, remembering roasting Tiger in his armor and melting cells, and backed up to the blog that had defended him.

Also standard. _Notice how his "any other fire-based NEXTs" immediately leads to accusing Fire Emblem of murder, because he just cannot cope with an openly gay black man as a hero._ Nathan supposed it was nice to have champions, but what he really wanted was Lunatic in a cell, because setting aside all his personal baggage — the police investigation, the threat of suspension from the show, Agnes putting on her professional face and telling him that cooperation with the police was part of Hero TV's founding mission —setting people on fire was _barbaric._ Nathan had never killed anyone with his powers, but he had his reasons to be careful with them. He'd seen two men burned alive during that investigation, and his intellectual acknowledgment that fire was a terrible way to die had been cemented after that. He'd grown much more careful, and defensive, with his own fire as a result. The last time he'd actually hurled fire directly at a human had been when they'd caught a serial rapist leaving a victim's house, and he still sometimes had nightmares that he'd actually hit the man.

Of course, he knew the catalyst. Lunatic had claimed another victim the previous night, in prison, this time. The man had been convicted of a convenience store robbery, but he had a prior conviction for killing someone in a drunk driving incident, and a history of domestic abuse charges. Not a great loss to society, but not a death anyone deserved, either. Nathan knew better than most how painful a death by burning would be.

It was a change in Lunatic's approach. Since he'd burned the church, he'd made a point of going after the heroes' targets, typically on the air. Nathan had always been frustrated that Tiger and Barnaby were the most successful at getting close to him, because, if he was honest with himself, he was still holding a grudge. He wanted to have it out with the vigilante. He didn't know if the quiet, after-hours strike meant anything. That was for the task force to hash out. All it meant to him was that his chances of getting a shot at Lunatic on the air were shrinking. That wasn't so bad, really. He didn't want to give the man any more publicity, and he certainly didn't want to play up some rivalry for the cameras — the last thing he wanted was to cement an association between the two of them in the public's mind — but he had frustrations to take out and grievances to air.

So a private showdown, of some sort. There'd been very little hope of making that happen when Lunatic only appeared to try to snipe the heroes' targets, and there'd be even less now that he was, at least sometimes, back to flying under the radar. It might be a temporary decision, or it might not, but Nathan finally felt like he'd waited long enough. A private confrontation would require getting in touch with Lunatic. And while he didn't know exactly how to make that happen, he had an idea.

He pulled his corporate PDA — no one man should have quite this many phones on his person, he thought, not for the first time — and called his secretary. "Veronica, sweetie, I need a huuuuge favor," he began.

"Of course you do," she said. "Does the cape need more tweaks?"

"Some magazine published an interview with Lunatic... what, six months ago? I want to find that."

He heard her yawn. "Got it," she said. "This was 'huge?' I'll email you the link."

"You're an angel," he told her. "Don't tell me how easy it was. I'm waiting on a sponsor meeting, I don't have time to search for, what, 'Lunatic interview?'"

She laughed. "Sure you don't."

The link to the electronic edition included the writer's email. E. L. Mendoza. He decided to use the official Fire Emblem address.

_I need to get a message to Lunatic. I assume you won't put me directly in touch with him, but if you could pass him a message I would be very appreciative._

 

Nathan wasn't expecting the call from Agnes, especially when she didn't bother greeting him with _Bonjour,_ just asked him, flatly, "Why are you trying to get in touch with Lunatic?"

"And how do you know about that?" he asked.

"I went to J-school with Liz Mendoza. She wanted confirmation of your identity."

He cursed inwardly. "You get accused of murder and see if you don't hold a grudge," he said, his voice slipping into its lower register. "I want a word with Lunatic. Privately. No rivalry storyline, nothing on the air." Agnes was a friend, but he knew what her priorities were. "This is personal. They're _still_ trying to link me to his killings."

"Nathan, those people are wingnuts. You can't take anything they say seriously." She sighed, and her tone was lighter when she continued. "You have to admit it'd make a good storyline."

"But it's not going to."

"Just ruin all my fun," she grumbled. "Have it your way. Just don't get yourself, or wreck one of our biggest ratings-booters."

" _Wreck_ him?" Nathan asked, arching a brow. "Sweetie, _that's_ not why I want to meet him." She laughed as she cut the connection, and Nathan leaned back in his desk chair. He could carry on his childish grudge match in peace. That was... something. He wasn't quite sure what, but it was something.

The email didn't arrive until late that night. _Tell me your message and I'll let him know._

He'd been thinking about it all day, yet most of his ideas evaporated when he actually needed to type. _Tell him I'm challenging him. We'll see whose fire is stronger._ He knew he could _speak_ a line like that, but written out on the screen... He deleted it, undid the delete. He was still Fire Emblem, after all. _He can meet me on the roof of the old Helios power plant by the river._ His company's property; no one else would be affected if there was property damage. Of course, it could be taken as arson, but he'd cross that bridge when he came to it.

 

Fire Emblem. Yuri Petrov pulled up the file, but his own impressions told him more than the facts in the computer record. He remembered the car, the flamboyant costume, the exaggerated, effeminate mannerisms on the air. He also knew that Nathan Seymour was the owner of Helios Energy at the age of thirty-three, which suggested there was considerably more depth to the man than his facade would otherwise indicate. And it was quite a facade. He was even more flamboyant in his civilian identity, if that was possible. The cars seemed to be a theme; Seymour collected them. The pink, however, he couldn't explain.

As the heroes went, Fire Emblem could have been worse. He did actually strive to arrest criminals, rather than just seeking publicity, and he'd made a point of donating his time, money, and fame to a range of organizations and charities that suggested personal involvement in their selection - LGBTQ rights, anti-bullying, child abuse prevention, scholarship foundations for students of color. The causes suggested a biography, but Yuri knew better than to read too much into them. He knew that Mr. Legend's list of causes had included anti-domestic violence initiatives.

Yuri knew about Seymour coming under suspicion of murder shortly after Lunatic became active. He knew because he made a point of attacking a second target while Seymour had an alibi, specifically to clear the man. His dossier of the heroes at that time was still bare-bones, and his interest in Fire Emblem had been limited to the similarities between their powers, but he didn't want someone who wasn't a killer being blamed for a death, just or unjust. Justice was the entire point of his mission, after all, righting the wrongs done by the law, not leaving the law to commit ever-greater injustices. That was the whole reason he'd placed himself in opposition to the heroes, who offered a distraction to the people so no one ever faced how broken their system truly was. Because they could see criminals being caught in the act and arrested, live, they didn't believe in police brutality, in flawed evidence, in the painful ambiguity of real cases investigated by the police without thousands of live witnesses. They believed that crime was resolved at the arrest, not at the trial. They had heroes, after all, to keep the world on its axis.

He signed into the proxy he used and sent the email to Ms. Mendoza. Signing up for an email address for Lunatic had been one of the more surreal moments of this whole peculiar crusade. _You can let him know that I'll meet him there Thursday night at 10._ Passing notes in class, he thought, so they could meet behind the bleachers after school to settle this. _See whose fire is stronger_ indeed. Like this was just some pissing contest about their powers.

 

 

The old Helios plant was a landmark, or at least the sign on its roof, using the retro-styled logo from the 20s, was. Nathan had proposed turning out the lights on the sign and condemning the plant, shortly after he took over Helios; the board members had protested so strongly he'd had to not only retract the idea but make a couple of quiet, personal apologies. People who'd grown up in Stern Bild felt _very_ strongly about this place. Lunatic might find some hidden meaning in Nathan's choice of venue, but that hadn't been Nathan's intent. To him, it was just a remote but easy-to-find location he could legally access, and potentially damage without significant consequences.

But it might not have been the best choice, Nathan reflected, wincing at the shriek of rusted hinges. He'd had to really put his shoulder into it to get the access open, and it was putting up even more resistance as he tried to wrestle it closed again. Security was light around the old power plant's grounds, an intermittent patrol aimed mostly at making sure nothing had been too visibly vandalized — the guards rarely even left their car — and Nathan had all the keys he'd need, but he didn't want any hanging-open doors to draw attention unnecessarily. The fight he was anticipating would be enough of a light show as it was.

With the door finally shut, he shed his civilian clothes — a rust stain on the sleeve of his jacket, he noted — and began the slow and sometimes frustrating process of pouring himself into the Fire Emblem costume. He'd debated when to make the change, worried about facing down Lunatic with cobwebs on his cape, but the sooner he was ready for anything, the better. Besides, while the plant might be out of service, that didn't mean no one ever came here. It was a popular destination for young people looking to explore abandoned buildings or spook themselves or a bit of both, though from what he could determine, they usually came in via a freight entrance that he'd dismissed as a possibility. There was no easy way to get from there to the roof-access stairwell.

No easy way, but clearly, the kids had _some_ way to get to the stairwell; as he made his way towards the roof, he discovered occasional drifts of junk food wrappers and beer cans, at least three used condoms commemorating the classiest of nights out on the town, and regular deposits of graffiti, ranging from modest inscriptions of names and relationships to poetry quotations, traditional tagging, and one impressive but half-complete spray-paint portrait of the Goddess of Justice.

The door to the roof was just as stubborn as the entry door had been, but Nathan knew it faced toward the river and would be blocked from the city's view by the sign, so he just softened it up with a blast of fire and then knocked it off its hinges with a couple of kicks. It was a bit cathartic, after skulking through the abandoned factory with only the glow of his own powers and the flame on the tip of his finger to light the way. He turned on the time display, which showed on one of the screens that covered his eyes in his cowl — just before ten. Good. The last thing he needed was to walk into an ambush. Lunatic might claim that he didn't want to fight heroes, but this had been a direct challenge.

Gravel and dust crunched beneath his feet as he moved across the roof. The access door had let him out near the Y of "Energy;" he decided to place himself parallel with the N, looking towards the back of the lighted letters. And then he waited. Lunatic liked to make dramatic appearances at high altitudes, so the sign seemed the likeliest point to make his presence known. Nathan was braced for the appearance of the vigilante, perched atop the cursive L of Helios; what he wasn't sure of was if Lunatic had been there seconds earlier, because Nathan became aware of Lunatic's presence thanks to the sound of him setting his cloak aflame. It seemed so wasteful. Nathan's own cloak was a far superior piece of flashy showmanship.

"Fire Emblem," the man intoned, brandishing his crossbow. "Why did you issue a challenge? I have no desire to fight heroes who do not stand in my way."

"I fully intend to stand in your way," Nathan retorted, his own voice raised. They were both playing to imaginary cameras, he realized. At least, he was. It was entirely possible Lunatic just acted this way all the time. "I'm tired of letting you sully my name with your barbaric attacks."

"Barbaric?" With a flourish, Lunatic created one of his flaming crossbow bolts. "Is it not more barbaric for a society to allow murderers to live, giving them the opportunity to kill again in the name of some foolish notion of rehabilitation?"

So they were going to debate the death penalty with drawn weapons. Of course they were. "You think it's more barbaric to rehabilitate criminals then to set them on fire?" Did crazed vigilantes understand sarcasm? "Get down here if you're going to fight me, coward."

"A coward? I do not hide behind your notions of justice and your delusions of a functional society. I have the courage to face the truth." Lunatic stepped off the sign, appeared to evaporate in a burst of flame, then reappeared on the roof, stepping out of another fireball, a few yards in front of Nathan.

"And I don't fool myself into thinking my personal code is the way the world should be run," Nathan snarled, and let a blast of fire go, cutting to the left to avoid the bolt that was shooting his way at the same time. Lunatic's fire spread and clung, unlike his own; closer to napalm than simple flame. Not for the first time, Nathan wished he could pull off some of the leaps and twists of the more gymnastically-inclined heroes, get some altitude against his opponent. He was left to blast rapid-fire flames at the vigilante as he ran. "I'm sure it's easy for you, shooting off your flames at a distance! You never see them when they're actually burning."

"I am also not foolish enough to make assumptions," Lunatic said. "Your system is broken, Hero. Justice has been replaced with entertainment, and the citizens are too complacent to care, or to demand better." Another bolt fired at him, but Nathan met it with his own fire. Lunatic's overpowered his, but it gave him time to sidestep.

"And of course your publicity-seeking is pure as the driven snow," Nathan tried another blast, but Lunatic dissolved in flames before it reached him, reappearing yards away.

"I seek to highlight the injustices of our current system. You cater to the population's baser instincts with your sanitized violence and easy solutions."

"And you're not catering to any bloodthirst at all!" Nathan could hear the growl in his voice. _Don't let him get to you,_ he reminded himself. _Stay focused. He's just trying to get you mad, get your guard down._

"I answer only to the voice of Thanatos."

That again. Nathan gathered the fire in his hands, pulled them apart, and then _pushed_ \- a broader, shorter-range attack, as hopeless as any against a teleporter. "Drop the mysticism," he snarled, unable to heed his own better instincts. "You're a murderer, but you make sure your victims suffer first. Say what you want about your reasons, that's the truth."

"Is it not also true that _you_ close your eyes to the failures of the system, to bias and corruption and brutality in the police force, to the vested interests that keep the courts from reform—" Nathan interrupted him with another fireball, one Lunatic countered with his own flames.

"I'm doing what I can, as _one person,_ to make the world a better place. _You_ are doing what you can, as one person, to spread painful death."

"For some crimes, a painful death is the only possible justice."

"For a certain fucked-up definition—" His PDA sounded. A call. Of course. "It seems you're saved by the bell," Nathan said, looking at Lunatic.

"Indeed. I was in terrible danger for a moment," the vigilante replied. So they do understand sarcasm, Nathan thought. "If you still wish to continue your attempts at persuasion, I will meet you here in a month's time."

"Oh, so you can make your dramatic, full-moon entrance? It's good to know that Thanatos is your only concern." Lunatic just vanished, in another gout of flame, and Nathan made his way to the stairwell, stepping delicately around the dented wreckage of the door.

 

 

In the days that followed, Yuri maintained his usual air of unflappable, distant calm, but he was surprised to find how much the encounter nagged at him during quiet moments. He'd maintained the Lunatic persona.  He hadn't broken character to refute every point Seymour made.  And now, he wished he had.

He knew how it felt to burn. He'd seen the effects up close, far too close, and to this day lived with the scars, his own and his mother's. He wasn't inflicting pain he didn't know, nor did he revel in it. He wanted to track the man down and tell him as much. He wanted to present Seymour with individual cases: with lenient plea bargains, with dropped charges, with crime lords jailed for tax evasion or bribery, convictions overturned because of jury instructions.

Tony Smith. Jack Brown. Bob Johnson. Kidnappers, murderers, who were finally imprisoned for theft and hijacking.

Nor was he some vigilante blindly attacking those he believed to be guilty without cause. He was only too well informed of the history of the criminals he hunted. Not just their convictions, but the cases the DA decided not to try, the jailhouse confessions, the unidentified victims of serial killers, the crimes for which a weapon or a body was never found. The wealthy killers whose expensive lawyers uncovered reasonable doubts that never seemed to arise for the poor. He did not kill indiscriminately, or senselessly.

And he found himself possessed of a powerful desire to make certain that Nathan Seymour knew that.

 

Nathan was edgy and restless for days after the fight, frustrated and unable to vent it no matter how much he battered the boxing bags at the training center. Facing off with Lunatic hadn't let him convince his opponent, or best him in a fair fight; his opponent had burned circles around him, mocked his beliefs, and vanished while mocking his powers as well. It was maddening.

It was maddening on _so many_ levels. As if he'd been born fabulously wealthy. As if he thought that all the crime in the world was the kind that made it on Hero TV. As if he'd never heard of police brutality, or racist juries; his aunt was a prison-reform activist, for God's sake. _Yes, Lunatic, let's talk about drug laws,_ he found himself thinking mid-workout, or while he was driving between events. _Let's talk about prison populations. Why don't you tell me just how it feels to get pulled over when you're a twenty-year-old black man wearing eyeshadow._ Money smoothed a lot of rough edges out of his life, but not all of them, and it didn't mean he'd forgotten them.

He wanted to make the man _listen,_ not just intone his nonsense and flit around showing off his tricks.


	2. Chapter 2

Another red full moon, and this time, Nathan hoped, he could at least hold his own. He'd made a point of watching Tiger's fights against Lunatic, and the key seemed to be closing the distance. The problem was that Tiger's super-powered durability had let him survive contact with Lunatic's flames, which normally killed pretty damn quickly. Nathan wasn't sure his ability to withstand his own flames would grant him immunity to Lunatic's. On the other hand, if the vigilante got him mad enough he might get reckless and find out. He lingered indoors, two flights below the roof, wrestling with adrenaline. It was more anger than fear, but he was twitchy, amped up, heart racing, and he longed to land a few kicks on something nice and solid and not human. A warmup. An outlet. 

But he had a cowl, and years of experience in front of the cameras. He didn't have to show any unease if he didn't want to. When he emerged from the empty doorway — someone had removed the door he'd mangled, but not replaced it — he scanned the rooftop and moved, calmly but with a practiced sweep of his cape, to the center of it. 

This time, Lunatic came into view as blue-green sparks, some distance away, flying closer in his uneven way. Nathan would have been lying if he'd denied ever trying to make that work for himself. Truth be told, he'd first experimented with it after seeing Lunatic in action. But he didn't seem to have the raw firepower for it. He watched Lunatic come closer, letting himself down gradually and slowing his descent to the rooftop with jets of fire from his hands. They were on a level, and Nathan lunged at him even before he saw Lunatic's eyes flare. The punch went wide, but he was surprised to see the vigilante stay in range, swinging at him with a fist full of flame, and Nathan ducked inside Lunatic's swing, drove a fist into his gut, and leaped back, shoving a quick double handful of flame at Lunatic as he did so. He was surprised to see it hit, taking out the stupid flammable cloak, and more surprised when Lunatic doubled over, letting out a hoarse cry.

"So you're not immune to my flames," Nathan said. His satisfaction at landing an attack — or two, really — warred with his discomfort. He didn't normally get in close with criminals, and he didn't normally use his fire on human targets, not deliberately. "And now you have some idea how it feels to burn. What you're doing to all those people you murder."

Lunatic stood, slowly, and Nathan couldn't tell how much was the deliberate, creepy weirdness of the vigilante's movements and how much was a human being in pain. "You taught me nothing. I already knew how that felt, Hero. I learned that before I ever took up this quest."

"'Quest.' Like you're off to slay dragons." Nathan readied another fireball, and as he'd half hoped, the vigilante winked out of existence before him; he spun, checking behind himself, but he wasn't fast enough. Maybe angered, maybe just tired of toying with him, Lunatic had already leveled the crossbow and fired, eyes flaring, before Nathan could loose enough fire to deflect it. He threw himself to the side, but the missile bit into his right shoulder, seared, and he fell to his knees, clutching at the wound with his left hand. No physical bolt, just the fire, and he tried to clamp his hand over it to smother it. So I'm not immune, he thought, feeling his hand burn too, wishing he'd thought to shield it with his own fire first. 

"I slay the monsters that threaten this society. The killers that your beloved justice system cannot stop." Lunatic was walking towards him, and Nathan forced himself to his feet. The flames didn't seem to have spread, but the pain was still too intense to let him remove his hand from the wound. "I know the justice system. I know its failures, its weaknesses, its loopholes."

"And you think I don't," Nathan said, through gritted teeth. "You think I don't know anything about injustice, just because I'd take the system we have over vigilante killings."

Lunatic stood only a few yards from him, the crossbow at his side, fire on his hands but not in his eyes. "The risk of vigilantism is the risk of error. I _know_ that I only target the guilty."

"By magic," Nathan said, not wanting to back away, not wanting to mount another attack with his hand and shoulder still throbbing from the first. "You can read minds, like Jake Martinez."

"I have my methods."

"I have my doubts," Nathan said, moving sideways, and, yes, maybe a bit backwards at the same time. The vigilante matched him, until they were circling each other.

"Benoit Depardieu," Lunatic said. "The Lady Killer. He was at large in Stern Bild, yet Hero TV aired a seajacking rather than dedicate resources to tracking him. Because the rape and murder of women linked to prostitution troubles your advertisers." He flipped the crossbow in his hand, readying a bolt with the other. "Michael Heywood. A serial rapist, arrested by heroes, yet his apprehension only merited a mention, as filler. Your announcer called them 'attacks,' not rapes."

"So Hero TV is a family show. You may have noticed," Nathan said, finally pulling his hand from his shoulder, forming a shield before him, "we're not the only law enforcement in this city."

"You may ask," Lunatic said, "how many of the citizens are aware of this."

"And I care? Our job is to assist the police. We come in for the hostage situations and the hijackings because they're dramatic, and half the criminals pull them to get their faces on camera."

"You identify the flaws in your own system and describe them as if they were harmless," Lunatic said. "You _create_ crime rather than deterring it."

"I'd rather they plan elaborate publicity crimes than mass murders," Nathan said, and figuring he might as well press his luck, he took a step toward his opponent. Get in close enough that Lunatic couldn't miss the exposed skin. "You wanted to talk about police brutality. The unfairness of the system. Oh, here's an idea — let's talk about who got executed the most back in the good old days. Why _did_ Stern Bild discontinue the death penalty? If you know so much about the legal system?"

"If you ask these questions, clearly you know the answers," Lunatic said evenly. He was holding the loaded crossbow upright. He wasn't aiming it. Not yet. A small part of Nathan marveled at the amount of focus it must take to keep that bolt of fire tangible without burning bow or string; _Face it, Seymour, you're outmatched._ "And if you know the answers, you know precisely what I mean when I describe your broken system."

"Sometimes something can keep working despite some broken parts," Nathan said. Another step. "Until you get someone who just doesn't care, who wants to run it into the ground, tear it all down because obviously, the replacement in his head is better." _Now,_ he thought, throwing himself forward, a fistful of flame aimed at Lunatic's mask. He felt it connect before he felt the searing impact with his own face, part of it absorbed by his cowl. He stumbled, his follow-through faltering but his momentum carrying him past Lunatic, then whirled, trying to force his eyes to focus on the wavering figure. Was his vision really affected, or was it just pain, or damage to the cowl's eye screens? Lunatic had dropped the crossbow, and was holding a hand to his own mask. 

"If you feel fire is so inhumane, why do you use it against your opponents?"

"Seems to me like the only language you understand," Nathan said, willing himself not to touch his face. The fire hadn't clung to him, and the blow itself had only been glancing - without the cape, he could see that the other man's costume with its puffed sleeves was designed to hide a thin build. No doubt he was strong, given the way he flew, but probably not trained to fight. "If I'm going to make you listen, that's what I have to use."

"Ah, the goal is to communicate? I thought you wished to see... 'whose flames were stronger,' was it?"

"The goal is to _stop you,_ " Nathan said, his voice twisting into a growl again. His hands were extended, an uncoordinated blast of flame at Lunatic, or at least the spot Lunatic had been. 

"Perhaps next month," Lunatic said, from the first upright of the H, and then he leaned backwards and fell. No amount of studying the vigilante's recorded appearances, and no amount of reminding himself that he wasn't Tiger or Sky High, was ever enough to keep Nathan from moving toward the edge of a building when someone fell or jumped, even if only a few steps. This time, he darted between letters to look over the edge of the roof, and saw, of course, that Lunatic had vanished. 

He went down to his car, slowly, trying to find the ways of moving that would do the least harm to his burns. The half-finished Goddess of Justice was still there, undisturbed by whoever had moved the damaged door. The rusted exterior door was still stubborn, if a bit less so than it had been on the way in; even though he only put his left shoulder against it, his right still throbbed with each shove. He managed to gather up his clothes, but he couldn't stomach undressing and then putting more fabric against his shoulder; anyone he saw on his drive home would just have to assume Fire Emblem had had a rough night. He pulled the rearview mirror down to check his face, the damage to his cowl, and then he pulled his personal phone out of the glove compartment to call his doctor. 

 

Yuri hadn't wanted to end the fight, but he'd wired his helmet to receive certain calls, and he knew the ringtone for the psychiatric wing of Asclepius Hospital. He didn't dare to answer, but he'd return the call once he reached his car. He doubted Fire Emblem could track him, but he still made a point of flying as smoothly as he could, masking the pain; if he stumbled on his landing, and leaned shakily against his car for several minutes before he began to change, no one was there to see. 

The coat, gloves, and mask were the most incriminating elements of the Lunatic costume. Without them, most nights, he could pass cursory inspection; admittedly, he would never leave his house clad only in a pair of strangely-cut bellbottoms and the undershirt he wore beneath Lunatic's jacket, but a policeman pulling him over for speeding had no way of knowing that, and he was always a cautious driver anyway. 

Most nights, he could pass inspection. But this time, when he removed the jacket, he found a wide semi-circle of the undershirt was singed brown, over the most painful area of his abdomen. Gingerly, he lifted the hem, and sucked in his breath at the sight of the angry, red blisters already forming. He'd thought the pain was mostly the result of the punch, but clearly the flames had also made their mark, without doing obvious damage to the jacket. He levered himself gingerly into the driver's seat, wincing with every movement. He should have recognized the feeling of a burn. He'd lived with this before, and he could do so again. His mask was undamaged, at least, and his face appeared unmarked. Seymour didn't have the raw power of Wild Tiger, it seemed. Once he would have placed the return call to the hospital immediately, but he didn't want to risk distraction while driving, even the mild and wholly legal distraction of a hands-free phone call. Not when he had this degree of pain taking up his attention.

It didn't look good, in the mirror at home; second-degree, he guessed, probably deep. He didn't have enough gauze in the house to cover even the smaller, fist-sized central burn, the worst of it. He'd need a cover story if he took it to a doctor. Maybe his mother had thrown something boiling at him. It had happened before, though usually her aim wasn't good. He'd tend to it after he'd checked on his mother's status. At this hour, a minor emergency center, he thought. Or a hospital's emergency room. With luck he could make do with the former. He took a handful of aspirin, hoping he wouldn't regret the blood-thinning effect later.

His mother's suicide threats were almost routine by now. The health aide who stayed with her during the day ensured that she was never able to act on them, so he'd come to think of them, guiltily, as almost a relief. The hospital would keep her until they felt sure she was no longer at immediate risk, he'd get a bit of a vacation from her, and if they successfully coaxed her into taking medication while she was with them, she might be a bit easier to live with for a short time after she returned home. She'd be better off, as well, able to live in her dreamworld for a bit, until the medication dispersed it. She wouldn't have his presence constantly upsetting her, frightening her, reminding her of Papa. At times, he wondered if he should leave his scar uncovered around her, a constant reminder of their reality, of Papa's death, and why it had happened. What stopped him was uncertainty that _he_ could take seeing his father's hand reflected in every mirror, window, or polished bit of metal, never mind her violent responses to such reminders.

Did Fire Emblem have any hidden scars, Yuri wondered, any disfiguring mishaps, even a simple house fire in his past? 

He contacted the hospital, and spoke to the psychiatrist on duty. On the screen, she looked weary, but her voice retained the determined level of calm, reassuring cheer that he knew from his mother's previous visits. He promised he'd try to keep her on her medications, this time. He wondered if the young woman, surely not much older than he was, placed more blame on him or on his mother for her return visits, or if she even remembered his mother between incidents.


	3. Chapter 3

The nice thing about being an official hero was that your doctor, bound by confidentiality, could know your identity and never needed an explanation for your injuries. Burns in odd locations? Lacerations from a whip? Bullet wounds? They might not be fun, but you didn't have to worry about the police waiting for you once you were out of surgery, or even about uncomfortable jokes about your kinky sex life — although Nathan had found that very few doctors would kid him about such thing the way they might a straight guy. 

"So another fire NEXT, huh?" the doctor had asked. "When's it going to be on the air? You're damn lucky this shoulder wound isn't worse. I guess your costume helped shield you."

He'd put off the questions about the episode, picked up his painkillers — thank God for them — and glared in the mirror at the gauze on his face. Could he get away with peeling it off? Probably not. Blisters would just look worse. He should avoid the training center for a while, he thought, make use of that state-of-the-art gym he'd put in last year. Maybe a slight redesign to his cowl could cover up the worst of the damage on the air, until it healed. The palm of his hand was a mass of blisters, his face little better, and from what he'd seen of his shoulder it was a horror show, though the doctor was hopeful no skin grafts would be needed. But both of those could be covered by his costume, on camera. Off camera, well, easier to avoid everyone.

And he and Lunatic had their rematch in a month. He was more worried about healing up by then than he was about anything else.

 

With medical leave, prescription-strength analgesics, and a momentarily empty house, Yuri had little to do but take stock of his equipment. The Lunatic costumes — all save the helmet, which he'd crafted himself — had been ordered from an overseas supplier that created hero suits for freelancers and second-stringers, and, no doubt, at least a few people who, like Yuri, could not strictly be described as heroes. The fabric was designed to disperse heat, specifically chose because Yuri feared mishaps with his powers. He'd lost enough shirts and jackets to them when he was younger, to say nothing of the most obvious damage. Apparently, it had in fact dispersed the heat, resulting in a large but less-serious burn. When he looked closely, he could even see the slight discoloration in the gray fabric, matching up with the singe marks of his undershirt and the burn on his abdomen, somewhat below the solar plexus. 

Nathan Seymour seemed to be far more principled, far more invested in his beliefs in this matter, than Yuri would ever have suspected. He'd believed the proposed grudge match to be a shallow, passing whim, one that would be swiftly dropped when Seymour saw that he was no match for Lunatic. Instead, he seemed more, not less, impassioned this time than he had in their previous encounter, and that had paid off in mutual injury. Would there be a third rematch, he wondered, or would this put paid to the idea? If they did clash again, he would need to be prepared. Underestimating Seymour might not prove fatal — or if it did, the man was a genuine hypocrite — but it was certainly painful.

 

"Fire Emblem, what _happened?_ " Blue Rose demanded, as soon as she got close enough she could expect him to hear.

He jumped off the treadmill, already regretting that he hadn't just stayed with his home gym a bit longer. The blisters on his face had subsided, but not vanished, and the glove on his hand — some sort of healing mesh the doctor had attempted to describe in detail — didn't look any less out of place because he'd found a match for it. And while he'd covered his shoulder injury with a tee-shirt, the difference from his usual workout garb was bound to be noticed.

"Turns out I'm only immune to my own fire!" he replied, cheerily. She looked honestly worried, though, so he added, "Long story involving candles and a very enthusiastic date, and it'd be irresponsible to tell you any more than that. You're too young." 

"Like hell I am," she retorted. "Candles? Seriously? On your _face_?" 

"Sweetie, _I'm_ not the one playing a dominatrix. Shouldn't you know some of this?" 

"If someone's dripping hot wax on you it shouldn't be right by your _eyes,_ " she said. "I hope you're not still seeing him."

"No, no, of course not. You think I'd stay with someone who'd risk this gorgeous face?" Inwardly, he let himself sigh in relief. 

He tried a similar story when Antonio asked, and mercifully his friend's discomfort with any talk of sex in public was enough to nip that line of questioning in the bud well before it got as detailed as it had with Blue Rose. That meant he had to be cautious about when he changed in the locker room so Antonio couldn't see the bandages on his chest and shoulder. Or anyone, really; he hadn't had any significant public injuries that could account for it. But he did overhear Blue Rose answering something Origami had asked with a dark "You _don't want to know,_ " so he suspected he knew both what Origami's inaudible question had been and why none of the other heroes had asked. 

Except Sky High. "Blue Rose tells me I don't want to know why you are injured, but she is incorrect! I want to know!"

He patted the King of Heroes's shoulder comfortingly. "It's just a chemical burn, dear. Hair dye gone wrong. Don't worry about it. I'll be fine."

 

Yuri appeared on the roof, as they'd agreed, at the next full moon. It hung low in the sky, red, seeming huge near the horizon. He knew how to silhouette himself against it, how to make his appearances, but his injury from their last fight had throbbed afresh with each gout of fire he used to propel himself to the meeting place, and the pain was not abating just because he was now standing still. He didn't see the point to theatrics under the circumstances. He kept his cape around himself as if it coud shield him from more than the autumn chill in the air.

Fire Emblem didn't seem to be in much better shape. He might mock Lunatic's showmanship, but he had his own array of poses and flourishes, many centering on his cape, and he wasn't using any of them. His cape wasn't even doing its hypnotic flame effect -- he must have switched it off. "So tell me," Seymour asked. "If we heroes are such a detriment to justice, if we're creating crime and keeping the people complacent, why _aren't_ you trying to eliminate us? Or maybe you've decided you should, and my shoulder's just the starting point."

"Some of you are just media lapdogs. Seeking fame, praise and fortune over justice. Others of you seek to uphold justice in your own way, however flawed your understanding, or how limited your capabilities."

"What do you know about Sky High?" the hero demanded, all the feminine inflections gone, and Yuri needed a moment to process the question. He'd been thinking of Wild Tiger.

"Only as much as I know of you, or any other hero." 

"He patrols this city every night," Seymour said. "He has ever since he became a hero. He doesn't see how many people commit their crimes close to home, so he doesn't find anything, most nights. But he still tries."

"Then Wild Tiger was not alone among you heroes," Yuri said, rolling his shoulders in one of the gestures he'd consciously adopted as Lunatic. His burn protested instantly.

"No, and you know what makes Tiger a good man? When you set a building on fire, he's the first to run in to save the criminals you were trying to kill." Seymour shifted into a fighting stance, and Yuri set his own cape aflame, holding his crossbow upright. 

"And you, Fire Emblem. If you consider burning such an inhumane punishment, how do you justify remaining active as a hero?"

A column of flame, so quick Yuri could barely get out of its way. Seymour was improving, just as he'd feared.

"I stop their cars, I melt their weapons, I shield against their bullets. Not everything is an attack!" Yuri fired, knowing Seymour would dodge it, just keeping the dance moving.

"And you never feel the urge to be more direct? To end a criminal whose loss no one would mourn?"

"Of _course_ I do," the other man said. He made a flicking gesture with his hand, then another, and Yuri had to move, outrunning the small, spitting flames Seymour was firing at him. "There are always crimes that hit close to home. But _I_ don't flatter myself that I deserve to decide who lives and who dies."

"You seem to consider it a privilege," Yuri said, finally deciding to materialize within feet of the hero, risking another injury for the chance to unnerve him. It seemed to work; Seymour reared back, though he held his ground. "To believe that I enjoy my task. That I seek this out for some benefit to myself."

"So you'd claim you're spreading agonizing death out of the goodness of your heart." 

Seymour's sarcasm might have been entertaining, in some other context. "Why are you a hero? Do you seek admiration? Fame? Money? You have little need of any of these, Nathan Seymour."

Blazing hands shot out to grab him, clutching either side of his mask, and Yuri fought to pull away. _"Where did you learn that name?"_ Seymour demanded, his voice as low and guttural as Yuri had ever heard it. He gave up his struggles and just stayed in Seymour's grip, his mask's staring eyes and bared teeth facing down the painted lips twisted into a snarl, the white screens shielding the man's eyes. "Answer me!" the hero shouted. Yuri felt the heat seeping through the mask, and fought down reflexive panic. He needed to be away, and so he was, standing at the edge of the roof, his crossbow primed, but Seymour was running for him. He aimed a bolt at the man's feet, but it went wide and grazed his leg. It barely slowed him. Yuri relocated again, to the giant cursive L he'd used for his first entrance.

"I will answer that in one month's time," Yuri said. "Be assured, Fire Emblem, I have no interest in your family or anyone else close to you."

He was gone before the other man could respond, jets of flame pushing him back toward his car, the adrenaline in his veins almost enough to distract him from his protesting injury.

_Why had he done that?_ he asked himself, back in the room he thought of as his "lair" with all the irony he could muster. Watched over by his spare masks, examining the char marks on the one he'd been wearing, he had no answer. An impulse, one he should have ignored. He was letting this get to him; he'd wanted to shake Seymour up, to throw him off balance, the way he was being thrown off balance.

He'd been aware for nearly two years, now, of Wild Tiger's apparently genuine belief in justice. In a very specific definition of justice, one that spared no thought for the criminals beyond their apprehension. It had intrigued him, drawn him out for situations that he'd normally have considered none of his concern. He'd made a point of punishing the guilty, not defending the innocent, until Kotetsu T. Kaburagi was falsely accused. But he'd always believed the man was almost alone amongst today's heroes, a throwback to an earlier era before armor was designed with plenty of room for advertising. Nathan Seymour's determined attempts to fight him — to _argue_ with him — had called that into question, even more than the content of his arguments or his stories about Sky High.


	4. Chapter 4

Nathan's doctor had asked "Seriously, what's going on?" and Blue Rose had eyed him suspiciously when he took to working out in a tracksuit, but it was Agnes who turned up on his doorstep, arms folded, and stared him down. "Fine, come in," he sighed, stepping back from the doorway, and she marched into the house, heels sounding like gunshots on the stone floor.

"What did I _say_ about getting injured?" she demanded.

"I'm not injured."

"Bullshit. I've seen you limping."

"No, you haven't." The burn on his leg wasn't that bad.

She ignored that. "This grudge is out of hand. He _kills_ people, Nathan. You're calling it off if you don't want to go on medical leave."

"Fine, then it's medical leave," Nathan retorted, and she stared at him, her mouth half open. "I'm getting better. I'm learning by watching him. I _will_ take him down, and that'd be better for the city than anything I can do on the show."

"Like hell it would," she said. "Once in a blue moon — okay, red moon — he kills a murderer. That's a big loss! They kill each other in prison."

Nathan pinched the bridge of his nose wearily. "I know you like what he does for your ratings, Agnes, but come on. Let the ratings _go._ You've proved yourself a dozen times over. Ratings aren't worth anyone's life."

"A serial killer's life? A child molester's? I'd throw them to Lunatic in a heartbeat," she said. "Most people wouldn't need a motivation."

He sighed, trying to resist the urge to actually bury his face in his hands. Remembering Tiger and Bison doing chest compressions on criminals they'd pulled from the church. "That doesn't make it right."

Her turn to sigh. "Nathan. I'm not trying to offend your moral standards, here. You know I don't take the whole justice thing as seriously as you heroes. Even if this wasn't our most reliable post-Barnaby ratings booster in question, I'd want you to stop fighting with whoever it is that keeps setting parts of you on fire. I'm worried about you."

"I can take care of myself," he said, but he was touched. Agnes usually couched her expressions of concern or affection in ulterior motives she might or might not really hold, rather than stating them baldly like this. Though, of course, it could be ploy to keep him from killing Lunatic himself, but he wanted to give her the benefit of the doubt. "Really. I know what I'm doing."

"Obviously not!"

He finally convinced her to leave with vague assurances that he'd 'be careful' and 'reconsider this.' What he was actually considering was the same thing that had been on his mind since the latest encounter: Lunatic knew, not just his name, but exactly which Nathan Seymour he was. Lunatic knew his identity, and Lunatic insisted that he only killed those guilty of crimes, that he _knew_ he was weeding out the guilty and leaving the innocent unharmed. Lunatic... was almost certainly linked to the Justice Department. This was a lead. Lunatic's victims were well-known and well-documented. He could do this. He could, at least, coordinate the list of Lunatic's victims with the prosecutors and judges involved in any of their trials. See if any patterns emerged.

It would keep him from questioning his own motives for becoming a hero. Or anyone else's.

 

At least, he'd thought it might, but at a bar with Antonio that night, he swirled the wine in his glass thoughtfully and asked "Why did you become a hero?"

"Huh," Antonio said. "Nathan, you feeling all right?"

"I'm fine," he said. "Why wouldn't I be?" _I'm certainly not recovering from second-degree burns all over my body._

"Well, you haven't grabbed my ass in weeks, and that question actually sounded serious."

"Oh, are you feeling neglected?" He reached, and Antonio pivoted on his bar stool to evade him.

"Absolutely not!"

"Aww." Nathan gave up the attempt, more easily than he once would have, he had to admit. "You really know how to make a girl feel unwanted."

"Seriously, man. You're not acting like yourself."

"I have some things on my mind," he hedged. "And you never answered my question."

"I dunno," Antonio said. "It wasn't like I had some childhood dream or anything. It seemed like a good way to use what I'm good at to make a living, and actually help people. And I did have a friend in the business. Kotetsu started a year or two before I did."

"Yeah," Nathan sighed. Blue Rose had sought to promote herself as a singer; he knew she was more dedicated now, but teenager that she was, she shied away from talking in-depth about her motivations. Dragon Kid had been groomed for it by her family, and while he knew she was a good kid at heart, dedicated to her work, she wasn't acting out of some grand ideal. Origami had been motivated as much by guilt over the arrest of the friend he considered better-suited for the role as he had by anything else, from what Nathan had pieced together; he seemed to feel obligated to become a hero in Edward Keddy's place. Sky High and Tiger both believed, wholeheartedly, in justice, in protecting the weak. And Barnaby had been motivated by revenge, or closure, although Nathan was inclined to think his later statements about protecting and helping were sincere; Tiger had that effect on people. Lunatic might well not realize it, though.

"What about you?" Antonio asked. "Why'd you go for it? It's not like you were out of work, Mr. Energy Tycoon."

"Hmm." He took a sip, but he wasn't in a mood to appreciate the wine. "I had a flashy ability that looked impressive, and didn't really have any peaceful applications. I figured this was something I could do with it, which was why I tried out for Hero TV when I did. And I couldn't get sponsorship. So that was eye-opening."

"When was that?"

"Hmm... back in '66. Over the summer. So I decided, fine, I'll do this my way — but being a hero was always on the agenda. We needed a gay hero."

"Flaming," Antonio agreed, good-naturedly, and Nathan smiled at him.

"You know that was part of my original pitch."

"I'd be stunned if it wasn't. Wait, though — '66? You're younger than me. You were just a baby!"

"And seven years later I bought out Helios," he said.

"Yeah, yeah, rub it in. So everything you did was just to get into the hero business?"

"No, I love collecting cars too," Nathan said. The conversation turned — Antonio was looking to buy a new car — but Nathan's thoughts didn't. No, he hadn't set out on his rise for the top just to become a hero. But he'd made himself famous, and wealthy, and eventually powerful, for the same reason he'd become determined to be a hero after that initial rejection: because he wanted to prove that he _could._ He could take his pink hair and his flaming mannerisms on TV and make himself a star. He could take his royalties and invest them, buy properties and start up businesses, and turn them into a real fortune, the kind he could use for something larger than just purchasing houses and cars. He could take his fortune and buy out one of the top corporations in the city, in the _nation,_ and sit in a corporate board room with his lipstick and his glitter eyeshadow, even when he was wearing a three-piece suit.

Somewhere along the way, it had become about proving something more. Letting the kids like his younger self know that you wouldn't always have to wash off your makeup before your mother saw, that eventually you wouldn't be the only one in the room. There was more to life than small towns and high school.

It was a different kind of justice than Lunatic probably meant. Or Tiger, for that matter.

And yes, that did mean he was a lot more aggressive when he went after the three men who'd beaten a trans woman to death, back before all the smaller companies got out of the game and the sponsors got gunshy about "controversial" crimes — Lunatic was right about that — and Hero TV still sent the heroes on hate crimes or sexual assaults. He'd been furious when Agnes told him about the pressure they were getting on that front. For a while, he'd patrolled like Keith had, and he'd even interrupted a few attacks in progress. He should do that again, he thought. Even if his schedule was tight. He had time, now and then. Any time was better than none at all.

 

 

Yuri had set up one of his monitors as a television when he began watching Hero TV more regularly. He could always view the recordings later, but watching the episodes as they aired was something to do, when he had no current targets and had finished the work he'd brought home. But the familiar theme music always drew his mother's attention, her calls for him to bring her to the television, her questions about his father's current standing. It was easier to watch it away from her, while she was otherwise occupied.

He'd begun to watch for signs of injury in Fire Emblem, at first out of curiosity, then, when he realized his opponent was not taking any apparent time off, actual concern. He'd never intended to kill Fire Emblem, or any other hero; he didn't know the extent of Seymour's injuries, but surely they were at least as painful as his own. The pain affected his focus and effectiveness at his own work, which was entirely mental. Even given that Fire Emblem stayed at range, for the most part, and probably hadn't punched anyone save Yuri himself in the past year, being a hero was more physically taxing than practicing law. He couldn't help but be impressed that Seymour was carrying on his work as a hero, as well as maintaining his own corporate duties.

So when Hero TV ran a short segment about Fire Emblem and Sky High apprehending a group of criminals involved in a mugging, it caught his attention. _"One of the witnesses recorded this video on a cell phone,"_ the announcer was explaining, and Yuri turned his eyes away from the grainy, uneven video to look up the intersection named on the screen. _"Sky High could not be reached for comment, but we were able to contact Fire Emblem by phone."_ Yuri listened to the familiar voice, overlaid with less-familiar plummy, feminine tones, saying _"The police can't always reach the scene in time. Neither can heroes, but we can try. No one's ever said we have to stop protecting the people of this city when the cameras stop."_

The location was close to a gay bar. He knew the address had sounded familiar.

He followed the story as more details emerged; a few months ago he might have been more cynical about the timing of this news, but both the heroes seemed reluctant to answer questions about the incident. Perhaps, he thought, Seymour had just taken to heart some of their discussion. Perhaps publicity was sometimes unavoidable, for them. He listened to the interviews with the two men the heroes had saved, and the witnesses, as it became clear the "mugging" had clearly been an assault motivated by homophobia, and the prosecutors were seeking hate crime charges.

The moon waxed closer to full, and Yuri hunted a man who'd been convicted of second-degree murder. After years of domestic violence incidents that never resulted in charges, William Kincaid decided his wife was cheating on him and strangled her. He'd been well-to-do, a doctor, respected in the community. He'd been a model prisoner.

He'd served twenty-five years, for a woman's life.

He wasn't a career criminal, though, and that made him both easier and more difficult to hunt. His life outside of prison echoed the patterns he'd had before; he played golf, he ate dinner with friends who apparently didn't consider murder a significant character flaw, he shopped at the same upscale stores where Yuri himself bought his groceries or gifts for his mother. He was easy to track, and would be easy to kill, yet Yuri held back. He hadn't had a vision of his father's ghost in months, taunting him with questions about justice; instead, he heard Nathan Seymour's voice, saying _You're spreading agonizing death out of the goodness of your heart,_ calling fire barbaric, telling him _It's the only language you understand._ He found his hand going to the healing wound on his abdomen as he tailed Dr. William Kincaid, and he drew the hunt out, delaying his kill.

The weather grew cold, the moon grew full, and Yuri needed to decide what he would say when he next faced Seymour.


	5. Chapter 5

Yuri left the crossbow behind. He'd hoped to approach the roof without the use of his powers, but he wasn't trained as the heroes were, and couldn't safely make the leaps across buildings they seemed to manage so effortlessly, especially not when most surfaces were thick with the drifting snow that was still falling. He had to settle for the semi-flight he'd worked out long ago, propelling himself through the air with blasts of flame.

Seymour was waiting, hands on hips, a splash of bright color against the snow, as Yuri landed and walked towards him. The sound of traffic was muted and far away; closer at hand, all Yuri could hear was the crunching of his own footsteps. Seymour didn't move, but when Yuri drew close enough, the other man called out, in a voice seeming curiously muffled by the falling snow or by accumulation of it around them, "Justice Department, hmm?"

Yuri stopped. At least his mask gave no other indication of his surprise. But he felt he owed Seymour something after a month of that mystery, so he said, "Yes. What led you to that conclusion?"

"My name, and your certainty that you were right. It didn't take me much further."

"Did you believe I would be so transparent as to only attack those sinners whose cases I had handled?" Yuri asked.

"Hope springs eternal," Seymour replied, in that light, feminine tone Yuri typically only heard on the news. "Maybe I can get close enough to keep you from killing, at any rate."

Yuri felt a twinge of annoyance that he hadn't done away with Kincaid already. "You are not close enough yet, Fire Emblem. The demands of Thanatos are—"

" _Drop_ it," Seymour interrupted. "It's not 'Thanatos.' You have some reason for doing this. You didn't come in fires blazing, for once, so tell me."

"My reasons?" Yuri asked. He thought of rolling his head on his shoulders, reverting to Lunatic, saying a hero could never understand his reasons. "The system fails, Hero. The system fails all too often."

"You mean the system failed you."

Under his cloak, Yuri folded his arms. "In the sixties," he said, "if the police were called for a domestic dispute, they would make no arrest unless the victim specifically requested it." _He's going through a rough patch. He just lashed out, but I'll be fine. It looks worse than it feels._ Saymour shifted, his hand going to his chin - he was thinking.

It had been an accident, everyone had agreed. Nothing about self-defense, about defending his mother, even though one eye had swelled entirely shut before the police even arrived, even though there were still bruises in the shape of his fingers around her throat from the incident the week before, when Yuri had called the police, and they'd once again left after urging his father — they'd called him "Mr. Legend," and "Sir" — to take a walk around the neighborhood to cool off. It had been an accident, and the circumstances were rendered even more hazy in the news reports, for the benefit of a grieving city. They'd lost their first and greatest hero, after all. "My father would have killed my mother before the year was over, if my powers had not manifested when they did."

His mother had watched the memorial service on TV.

"You killed your father deliberately?" Seymour asked, his voice betraying no sign of shock.

"No!" Yuri shouted, then fell silent, surprised at his own vehemence. "It was an accident. I had no idea I had powers until I tried to stop him. I only wanted to stop him." He put one hand to his face, to the scar, a reflex he could never quite stop. "But it was right."

"Why continue, then? Why make it your mission?"

He'd vowed never to use his powers again. To serve justice, to stop evil, in an entirely different way than his father had. But years of work had made it abundantly clear to him how little power he truly had, how little right and wrong and fairness had to do with justice. "An eye for an eye," he said. "A life for a life. Stern Bild has forgotten true justice."

"That's not an answer," Seymour said. "True justice isn't an agonizing death. What you do is get revenge — whatever the victims or their families might want."

"Do you think the murders I punish are humane and painless, Fire Emblem? Do you think there was no suffering in my house beyond physical pain?" His mother cowered not just from his father's anger, but from any loud noise; they'd walked on eggshells, never knowing if he'd content himself with a muttered curse or if he'd want to take his anger out on someone. Usually on his wife. Yuri received the occasional cuff, dodged a thrown plate or bottle from time to time, but the bulk of his father's fury was vented on his mother. "Do you think multiple stab wounds are a quick death? That victims have no time for terror?"

"And you think the only justice is punishment in kind?" Seymour's arms were folded over his chest, now. He was done, it seemed, with pondering, and Yuri tensed, almost welcoming a chance to fight again. "That's not just inhumane, it's impossible."

"No more impossible than protecting every citizen from danger," Yuri retorted. "Than driving the streets, hoping to disrupt fights and assaults as they happen."

Seymour ignored that. "You can't have believed you could kill every murderer who wasn't behind bars," he said. "What was your real goal, at the beginning? You hoped to make people question the heroes? Or question what justice meant?"

He'd investigated, using his own access, the police reports on his own father's death. He'd waited until the police officers who'd investigated it had retired, because they'd be sure to remember his powers. He'd had so little control over them then that the flames had still clung to his father's remains and flickered on the oil stain on the garage floor when the police had arrived. Once he knew they were gone, that no one who'd witnessed them before was still active in the police force, he'd begun to prepare, to practice his control of his powers, to compile his lists, to determine what circumstances merited his intervention. "I learned long ago never to turn a blind eye to evil," he said. "Evil must always be punished, even if the penalty comes too late to save its victims."

"Fine," Seymour said, "Don't answer," flames flickering around his hand.

"I thought I was the one who only understood violence?" Yuri said, unable to keep the sense of triumph out of his voice.

"Maybe if I put the question to you another way, you'll answer it," Seymour snarled, the flames lashing out, and Yuri jumped back, away from them. His cloak began to disintegrate, slowly, around the spot where they'd touched.

"Tell me, Fire Emblem. If you attempted to research my background, did you ever research the sinners I have punished? Which of them did you feel deserved a kinder death than the one I provided?"

"It's not _about_ them."

"If you feel what I am doing is wrong, what punishment would you have for me?"

"I'm not the one to decide that." Another lash of flame, like the crack of a whip; Yuri blocked it with his forearm, but he felt the heat through his sleeve. "That's why we have courts. That's why we have a _system._ "

"A system rotted at the core."

"A system we can allow to handle things so we don't have chaos." Another stinging stripe of heat. Yuri blasted back, a wave of flame. Seymour stepped out of it, glowing with orange flames like a forcefield, but Yuri could see spots of his own blue-green fire clinging to the man's red suit.

"You think you can idealize about our system of law to one who knows it as well as I do?"

"At least I don't spit in its face."

"We _could_ return to that old debate about the respect you heroes show for both justice and the law," Yuri noted, layering the sarcasm heavily. Seymour was trying to look unmoved, but there were lines of strain around his mouth. On impulse, Yuri reached for his flames and pulled; from what he could see, Seymour might have burns on his right side, just above the hip in a trail leading down to his knee. "Tell me. Why such compassion for murderers? The most brutal and remorseless of killers, yet you express more concern for their sufferings than those of their victims."

"Oh, you can read minds now? You know how much compassion I feel?" Seymour snapped his fingers, and another lash of flame shot towards Yuri, stopping just before his mask. "It's not any specific murderer, or even all of them. It's not even that you're using the evil twin of my powers. It's the fact _you're_ doing it. _You_ decide who's brutal enough to be killed and who doesn't quite make the cut. _You_ decide who got off because of his flashy lawyer and who was really innocent. That's not justice. It's dictatorship. It would be even if you were killing them painlessly."

Yuri didn't speak, or turn. He simply went away, dematerializing in a gout of flame, reappearing several buildings away, blocked from Seymour's sight. Or so he hoped.

At home, he treated the lashes on his arm with the leftover ointment from his earlier wound. Seymour didn't _know,_ he raged to himself. He reviewed every case, individually. He watched courtroom footage and parole hearings. He probably knew his quarry better than their own defense lawyers had by the time he was ready to strike. It wasn't an arbitrary decision. It was just, and it was fair.

 

 

By this point, everyone seemed to be used to the idea of Nathan covering up when he was training. He still missed showing his tattoo, but the scar on his shoulder was an ugly welt, still. The new burns on his leg were nothing in comparison. What struck him was that trick Lunatic had pulled, withdrawing the fire; it was the reason he hadn't burned more seriously. He'd known the vigilante's control over his powers was impressive, but he hadn't known he could do _that._

The other question, of course, was _why_ he'd done that.

In the realm of information he actually had, Nathan was inclined to believe the vigilante's story about his family. It was no excuse, but maybe it was an explanation.

But he was also wondering why he was so willing to believe. Why he was ready to accept Lunatic's explanation, without investigating it, looking for the holes, seeing if it held up. It was near-impossible to truly check out.  He had only the vaguest of timelines, a story of unreported beatings, and a cause of death. He could probably, given enough time, investigate every death by burning during the 60s. He wasn't sure he could even get access to police reports that had never resulted in an arrest. Yet he believed the serial killer who'd told him the tale.

He resisted, for a while, researching Lunatic's victims. But, fine, he could accept a challenge; he asked Veronica for the list and took it to the Justice Tower library. He collected the profiles mechanically, his mind barely registering any details beyond matching the names and the death dates, thinking about other things. _What punishment would you have for me?_

He'd asked Lunatic what he'd hoped to accomplish at the beginning, what the mission had been before continuing it had become a goal in itself. So it was only fair to ask himself what _he_ had hoped to accomplish by challenging the vigilante?

It had little to do with clearing his name.  He hadn't been under suspicion, to anyone save a handful of nutjobs on the internet, in over two years. It hadn't had much to do with justice, because he'd given more thought to what justice meant to him in the past few months than he had in years prior. It wasn't that he hadn't _cared_ about justice — in its way it had been one of his motivations to become a hero — but he hadn't defined it to himself, and couldn't have described it if asked, until this ongoing fight of theirs had begun.

It was pride, in part. Lunatic had put him under suspicion, killed in front of him, but then turned to a grudge match with Tiger and Barnaby, like Nathan was beneath his notice. Lunatic had Nathan's powers, but a stronger, more versatile version of them, and Nathan hadn't loved that.  He would have enjoyed bringing Lunatic in, where the golden boys hadn't. Performance as a hero wasn't Nathan's top priority.  His power was too dangerous for him to risk going all-out in most situations.  That wasn't an issue for him.  He didn't have a boss, pressuring him to perform, like so many of the others did.  He had his own niche within the heroes — no one was ever going to forget he existed — and he didn't need affirmation from the rankings or the card sales. But sure, he would have liked to have made a splash. To avenge his grudge and bring in the top prize.

So no, his motives hadn't been pure. He'd been much less interested in defending the murderers of Stern Bild than in his own ego.

The murderers and kidnappers and the organized crime enforcer linked to eight shoootings but serving time for an illegal gambling ring. The angel-of-death nurse who'd been convicted of killing three patients but suspected in dozens of deaths. Nathan had never had much of a taste for lurid crime stories, but his sister loved them, and some of the names he saw were familiar from her phone calls, despite the colorless descriptions of the crimes in the dossiers. "Convicted in the deaths of three members of the Morris family" brought back phrases like _stabbed thirty times_ and _somehow the oldest daughter made it out even though they set the house on fire with all of them dying inside._ She always wanted to know if he helped arrest any of the worst criminals. _"So what you're saying is you don't watch the show,"_ he'd tease, but he was beginning to see how it worked. She wanted to see these stories of horrible suffering, empathize with the victims, and then know the people responsible had been punished. Ideally by her baby brother.

So of course Lunatic's victims were the sadists, the ritualistic serial killers, the mob figures. Of course there were horrific stories if he decided to look them up in the news archives rather than the Justice Department files. Lunatic had probably intended for him to do just that. It didn't change the facts.

But it made it easier to understand. And if it made someone like Nathan, who'd been thinking about this incessantly for the past four months, feel a twinge of sympathy, Lunatic would walk away as a folk hero from a jury trial.

_What punishment would you have for me?_

_Guilt,_ Nathan thought.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Professor Oleck, and the descriptions of the legal system Yuri relates, both originated in Kurt Busiek's comic _Astro City._

The year was drawing to a close. Wild Tiger had returned from retirement, publicly revealing the duration of his powers and giving interviews about standing up for justice and protecting the people of Stern Bild. 

The man's naivete didn't rankle at Yuri as it once had, and his idea of justice didn't seem so strikingly idealistic; he wasn't alone among the heroes, clearly, in his dedication to some idea of justice. And the fact that he kept going head-to-head with Lunatic seemed to have more to do with luck and circumstance than with some singular fixation on stopping Yuri's alter ego. Clearly he rejected Yuri's own ideals, but so did Nathan Seymour, and so might many of the other heroes.

Wild Tiger's insistence that murder was not justice might seem black-and-white, compared to the fairly nuanced arguments Nathan Seymour had managed to present in the midst of a literal firefight, but Yuri was willing to give the veteran hero credit for more complex views than he'd managed to articulate so far. Still, he couldn't shake the feeling that Seymour was both one of the most intelligent and one of the most thoughtful of the heroes. Even without the evidence of his civilian accomplishments, it was an unavoidable conclusion.

Which made his rejection of Yuri's methods all the more maddening. Yuri had prided himself on the care with which he approached his task. The justice and logic of his mission should be evident to anyone who considered it at length. 

_What was your real goal, at the beginning?_ He'd wanted to make everyone — the citizens, activists, the heroes themselves — confront how hollow and corrupt the pre-packaged justice delivered by Hero TV truly was. He hadn't suspected the depths of the corruption, with Albert Maverick's confessed involvement in organized crime, but he'd been only too aware both of the ways traditional law enforcement was suborned by the demands of its celebrity-fueled competitor, and of the way that spectacular crime-fighting displays blinded citizens to the ordinary failings of the police and the courts. 

And so, yes, his earliest killings had resembled a spree more than the measured justice he'd delivered since then. He'd killed the three men in prison at once, an opportunity he couldn't ignore, and then a fourth to clear Seymour. He'd deliberately eliminated the syndicate at the moment of one of Hero TV's more ambitious planned stunts, because he needed to make his point to as wide an audience as possible, as quickly and dramatically as possible. Since then, he'd been painstakingly precise as he selected, tracked, and eliminated each target. 

Yet Seymour's argument was that precision and care and even a different set of powers entirely would not be enough, and Yuri found this far harder to dismiss than Wild Tiger's devout and simple proclamations about justice had always been. Seymour's claims, and his control over his powers, had been evolving, and he'd clearly devoted a great deal of thought to these questions since they'd begun this strange debate of theirs. It wasn't a pat refusal to listen to Yuri's views, it was a reasoned rejection of them. 

From a man he'd come to respect. 

Not just respect. Yuri respected Wild Tiger, as well, for his dedication to his beliefs, however wrongheaded. But he'd been genuinely concerned when he realized Fire Emblem was still fighting crime despite the injuries Yuri himself had inflicted. Yuri continued to play out his role in their fights, but he had less desire than ever to actually defeat his opponent. And yet the idea of canceling or forfeiting these matches, simply failing to show up, was also unacceptable. 

 

The first full moon of the new year arrived, the moon hanging low and red in the sky, and despite their lack of any agreement to meet again, Yuri donned his costume and made his way to the abandoned power plant again. Seymour had left his own costume behind, this time. He stood on the roof of the abandoned plant, looking at the scars their earlier battles had left, wearing a stylish and expensive but sober three-piece suit, and an impeccably tailored, no doubt very expensive, double-breasted wool overcoat which would have been unremarkable on anyone Yuri might meet in court save for the fact that it was a vivid shade of fuchsia.

"You're hard to miss," Yuri commented as he alighted, and Seymour responded with a peal of delighted laughter.

"I do try," he said, still smiling. 

"Is there some meaning to the change in costume, Fire Emblem?"

"Oh, please. You know my name. Why should I bother with the mask if I'm not aiming to fight?"

"If not to fight, why meet me here?" 

"We've been talking more than fighting for a while now." Seymour put his hands in his coat's pockets. "I'm curious. Why do you keep coming here? What's in it for you? Why'd you answer my challenge at all?"

Yuri stood inside his cloak, not quite sure what to do with his hands. He'd debated whether or not to bring the crossbow; he was glad, now, that he'd left it behind. "I am not immune to curiosity."

"That accounts for one out of four. Five, now."

"And to the impulse to win arguments," he added. "I believe these reasons should be familiar to you."

"I suppose you could say that." Seymour turned and began walking, slowly, toward the edge of the roof. Yuri watched until he reached the low wall at the edge, brushed it off, and seated himself. After a moment, Yuri followed, stopping a yard or so away. He hadn't seen Seymour often in civilian clothing — he didn't make regular appearances in court, for property damage or any other reason — and he found himself studying the man's face in the half-light. The feminine arch of his eyebrows did most of the work of rendering his face androgynous; in the partial light it didn't appear that Seymour was wearing much makeup beyond the obligatory light-colored lipstick. His features were striking, perhaps handsome, though the effect he cultivated was more feminine than Yuri preferred. Yuri wondered at the reason for that. He didn't pass as female in the slightest; it wasn't as though there was anything feminine about his build. But then, some would have identified Yuri himself as fey or effeminate, a description he'd never understood.

"I completed my homework assignment," Seymour added, his tone light and slightly teasing in the silence. 

"It's always good to have such diligent students," he replied. "Of course it didn't make a difference to you."

"Did you expect it to?"

"Have you never felt the desire to punish, not merely to arrest? To avenge some crime that... I believe you used the phrase 'hits close to home'?"

"I believe you _know_ the answer to that," Seymour retorted. "Even if I couldn't fault a victim for wanting revenge, the right thing to do is to resist the urge, and it's not my job to take it for them. Take Maverick, for instance."

Yuri had wondered if that might ever come up. "You would have permitted Barnaby Brooks Jr. to kill the man?"

"I couldn't have faulted him if he'd wanted to. Even if I couldn't imagine him killing someone in the state that Maverick put himself in. I doubt I would have stopped him if he'd tried, though Tiger might have." Seymour stretched his legs out, powerful muscles still visible through the drape of his slacks. The shoes he wore were some dark, conservative color, but they still had heels that would be pronounced even on a woman's shoes. It wasn't as though he was a short man without them. "Handsome could kill someone in a rage, no question. I'm not sure he could do it as calmly as you do."

_Handsome?_ "You felt that Maverick should have escaped justice?"

"All right, _now_ you're asking the tough questions." Seymour's pale mouth quirked into a smile. "Your kind of justice, possibly. Even if it couldn't have happened to a nicer guy. What Maverick pulled on Barnaby was _obscene,_ and it took everyone a while for that to sink in. I don't know if it's just to punish him for it after the brain damage, self-inflicted or not. I don't know if the law could do anything to him for some of his worst crimes." 

"You consider his mental manipulations worse than his corruption and murders, then. The crimes he coordinated."

"You were just looking for proof I can be biased. There it is." He drew his legs in, crossed one over the other. "I know the blood on his hands is worse than the mind control, but I can see the damage to Barnaby. He's a friend. Yes, we all have biases."

"Handsome," Yuri repeated, and he heard Seymour chuckle.

"It's a nickname," he said. "Surely you know by now I like men, darling. It's another of those things that's hard to miss."

True. But interrelationships among the heroes had never concerned him. "Indeed," he said, finally. 

"Do you ever feel guilt?" Seymour asked.

"Rarely. I did feel regret for the guards I had to fight to reach Albert Maverick. And I feel some sympathy for any family the sinners may leave behind. Most did not choose to love murderers."

Seymour sighed. "You're a lawyer, presumably. You work with the law, at any rate. Surely you know this isn't about individual cases."

Yuri had been thinking for some time about the story he was about to tell, refreshing and rehearsing it in his mind. But he hadn't foreseen, and couldn't explain, the sudden urge to take off his helmet. A desire to signal the significance of what he was about to say, perhaps, to let Seymour see his face, not the bared teeth of his mask. He should have a secondary mask, he thought. Like Wild Tiger. As if that did anything to conceal his features. A cowl, perhaps, like Fire Emblem's own. He had neither, and he left his helmet in place.

"When I was in law school, one of my professors told me about something he'd learned when he was a student himself. He said that one of his own professors told him the law was beautiful, that it operated like a machine. That it didn't matter who was on trial, the system would work if everyone did their jobs." Professor Oleck. He'd specialized in criminal law. "My professor said he thought of it more as a dance. The participants can work in new steps, or make adjustments. The law is always evolving. But his conclusion was the same — that the system was more important than any individual... missteps."

"That's the nature of any system," Seymour said. "Your solution is to personally take over all sentencing?"

Yuri paced away, toward the back of the Helios sign. "Did I say I agreed with him? Did I say I thought this was the only long-term solution?" He felt the anger as hot pinpricks beneath his skin, a restless itch on the verge of eruption. "My solution is to destroy the evil I see in front of me! You heroes speak of protecting the city, but you protect the handful of individuals you can personally rescue or shield! You can no more eliminate terrorism or crime or danger than I can eliminate murder!" He turned to glare at Seymour, but at the sight of the man, calm and unruffled, still seated, he felt his eyes blaze and flames forming in the palms of his hands, and he turned away again, fighting back the urge, as sudden and powerful as the desire to reveal himself had been, to just set the man aflame now, and consign all of his questions and prying and interference to ash. "Unlike _you,_ I can never turn a blind eye to wrongdoing!" 

Seymour's call bracelet sounded. Yuri whirled to face him. The man was standing, looking at him, still showing no signs of fear. "The difference is that we're not _committing_ terrorism as we say we fight it," Seymour told him, in quiet, measured tones, and then he turned his back on Yuri and walked away. 

Yuri watched him go, vanishing into the stairwell that led down into the plant. His fists wouldn't unclench, his heart wouldn't slow, and for once his eyes felt hot from the flames, until he turned and drove one flaming fist into the tale of the Y in the Helios Energy sign. Seymour was _wrong,_ and he wouldn't even stay to hear the reasons why. 

 

Yuri went to find William Kincaid. He watched the man's house, looking in through his windows, and longed to kill him. To show Nathan Seymour that Lunatic still believed no matter how many questions the hero might throw at him. That he held to his principles. 

In the end, he spared the man, because if he killed the sinner now, the motivation would be anger, not justice. He wasn't sure if Seymour would have guessed at that — probably so — but even if not, Yuri would have known. 

Instead, he made a point of monitoring Hero TV's targets. He planned, and waited. When they finally selected a criminal with a likely history, a drug dealer with a history of violent offenses and an acquittal for second-degree murder, he was ready.


	7. Chapter 7

Even if he'd been waiting for it for the last two weeks, Nathan still wasn't expecting Agnes's voice over the comm channel saying "Lunatic has been sighted in the area."

"Wow," he heard Dragon Kid say. "It's been months."

"He's been inactive since last fall, hasn't he?" Blue Rose said. "I wonder what brought him out."

"Maybe it's the fact Tiger and Barnaby are out of retirement," Origami suggested. "But the Second League heroes are nowhere near here."

"We've alerted them," Agnes said. "Remember, you need to protect the suspects from Lunatic in addition to arresting them. Absolutely do not allow them to escape, and don't engage Lunatic more than necessary." Conspicuous silence greeted that instruction. Sky High would probably go after Lunatic, Nathan thought. In their earlier encounters with him, before Nathan issued his challenge, Sky High had made a point of fighting Lunatic to defend the criminals in his sights. Blue Rose and Dragon Kid would go straight for the arrest — they might have the firepower to take him, but not the experience — and Origami would probably be in there with them, just to get on camera, though he'd been a bit more aggressive about points in recent months. Antonio was likely to set himself up as a defensive bulwark if the criminals were at all stationary, but that might not happen, since they were reportedly on the move in a car right now. 

Best for Nathan to give chase, too, then. It'd get Antonio into position as a defender more readily, and maybe even get the poor guy some points. Nathan's presence _might_ draw Lunatic that way, and closer to the criminals, but Nathan suspected the vigilante just wanted to make a kill to prove a point to him; if he wanted a fight, he probably had the means to find Nathan whenever he wanted.

"Where to, sweetheart?" Nathan asked, pulling up alongside the Rock Bison staging area. He didn't need to see Antonio's face to know how relieved he'd be at not getting launched, for once. 

"I think you have a better idea than I do," Antonio's voice echoed through his helmet as he climbed onto the back of Nathan's car, wedging himself in front of the spoiler. "Ready when you are."

Apparently the idea had been for the heroes to intervene in a planned drug deal, but the dealer in question and his cronies had taken off, spooked by the Hero TV helicopters. Which was a reasonable but remarkably rare response by criminals. Clearly these men weren't interested in spending some prison time to buy fame. Nathan wove through the traffic, slowed a bit by Bison's presence on his car. He could see Dragon Kid ahead of him, and wondered, not for the first time, what it must be like when you were in one of the cars she used as stepping stones. He passed her, and heard her voice over the comm channel — "How come you give Bison rides?"

"Because he's not breathing down my neck on points," Nathan replied with a smile, closing on the suspects' car. 

"Hey!" Bison protested. The police cars he passed abruptly put on their sirens, shutting down traffic, and as they passed the barricade he threw the car into a spin, letting Bison jump off. He shot ahead, braking and spinning again, and heard the squeal of the other car braking abruptly. Something prompted him to glance up, just then, and he saw Lunatic, standing on the railing of an overpass, blue-green flames flickering in his eyes as he looked down on the criminals' car. Distantly, he heard the panicked commotion from the suspects' car, but his attention wasn't on them anymore.

"Lunatic?!" Blue Rose gasped, pulling up short on the crest of ice she was riding. Lunatic's head rolled on his shoulders, and his upper body flopped to one side like a puppet with cut strings. He was playing to the cameras, performing the role in a way he hadn't been doing in their private face-offs. 

"You sinners and false heroes have grown complacent in my absence," Lunatic intoned, his cloak dissolving in flames. "It is time to remind this city of the voice of Thanatos." His torso leaned backwards, then flopped upright again. 

He had some kind of audio equipment in that helmet, Nathan thought, something to amplify his voice, and maybe distort it. This was the public Lunatic, not the one he'd been fighting until now. What had prompted this? He didn't think he'd done or said anything _that_ different in their last encounter, yet clearly it had shaken things up in his opposite number. Was it just the fact that they hadn't fought, hadn't given Lunatic his fix the last time? Yet he wasn't moving as aggressively as he used to when he targeted criminals. He was doing all the talking and showboating first, rather than saving it for after he struck. 

Nathan spared a glance backwards. The suspects had left their car, but stood huddled together. Blue Rose hadn't frozen them, thank God, or they'd be sitting ducks. Rock Bison had maneuvered himself between the criminals and Lunatic. No good, Nathan thought. Bison's suit was metal, and _Nathan_ could melt metal at full power. Bison's powers might hold out against Lunatic's flames, but he didn't want to find out for certain. Lunatic's eyes flared, and Nathan attacked. His fireball wasn't going to burn out or consume Lunatic's bolt, especially not when he'd had no time to shape it or put much force behind it, but it knocked the missile off course. Lunatic was already descending, blasts of flame from his hands slowing his descent, and without waiting for anyone else to act, Nathan charged.

He heard shouts — both behind him and in the earpiece he wore — but he tuned them out. Lunatic seemed to hesitate, and Nathan was able to aim a snap kick at his chin. He was almost surprised when he felt it connect, but not too surprised to follow through. The next kick planted a high heel in Lunatic's chest, but he felt a burning hand close around his ankle, and he unbalanced when he jerked back. He staggered, giving Lunatic time to recover, but Nathan was angry, motivated, and _he_ hadn't actually been hurt, so he was on the offensive again before Lunatic was. He knew better than to let Lunatic get any range, so he swung, his fist burning, and connected with the mask. A second punch actually knocked it askew, but his next swing hit air.

Lunatic was about ten feet away, adjusting his mask, and Nathan flung a torrent of fire at him. No art, no aim to speak of, the equivalent of swinging wildly. Lunatic sidestepped it easily. 

"So you'd say this man is evil?" Nathan asked him, panting. "And everyone with him? Kind of a loaded term, isn't it?"

"Perhaps your standard of behavior is low, Fire Emblem." A blast of blue flame shot past Nathan's head, solid as a fist. 

"Perhaps you just jumped at the first opportunity." 

Lunatic's eyes flared, and he turned away from Nathan, leveling his crossbow. Nathan snapped his fingers, engulfing Lunatic's crossbow hand in flames — or so he hoped — and running, shoulder lowered, to tackle him around the midriff. Not fast enough. The bolt left the bow, someone screamed, and Nathan and Lunatic both hit the ground. He could hear the screaming. _Fuck._ He punched the pinned man with another fist full of flame. Lunatic intercepted his second blow, held his fist still. But there was still no fire on his hand.

"You do not wish to see who I hit, Fire Emblem? You are not worried about your friends?"

" _Of course I am,_ " Nathan said through gritted teeth. He was remembering everyone he'd ever hit, remembering the prisoner and the bomber dying in front of him, and for once fury felt like ice. "The best I can do now for whoever you've hit is bring you to justice."

"A word that means very different things in different mouths," Lunatic responded. How could the man be so _calm?_ Nathan sparked another burst of flame, hoping to burn the vigilante, free his hand, but no luck. He shoved at the mask, which actually seemed to be cracked, and caught a glimpse of pale skin before the hand on his fist glowed green. He screamed, too shocked to manage any self-control; his fist was an agony, and it was just one hand. He'd live through it. 

And then Lunatic let go of his hand and reached for his shoulder, the shoulder he'd burned months ago. 

Nathan knew enough to know that the fact the pain _stopped_ was very bad news, but he felt like he was moving in slow motion as he tried to wrench the arm away. Then something hit it, jerking it back. He looked up to see Tiger, one of his wires wrapped around Lunatic's wrist, and then he was knocked back, scooped up, and carried, in arms that he vaguely recognized as a little pointy and uncomfortable. He was going somewhere, moving fast, and his eyes could barely focus.

Barnaby. Barnaby was princess-carrying him and he was too close to passing out to even give this the gloriously over-the-top treatment it deserved. He did manage a worshipful "My _hero,_ " though, before Barnaby got him to the waiting ambulance.


	8. Chapter 8

Yuri spent the ensuing days berating himself for giving in to the temptation. The bolt had struck, not his target, but one of the sinner's companions, a mere boy with no violent offenses on his record. Convincing himself that the youth had been well on his way to emulating his criminal mentor was little consolation, not with the young man's grieving relatives sobbing and shouting at the news cameras everywhere he turned. Especially since a careless shot like that could as easily have hit one of the heroes. And especially since he'd also, in his anger, put Fire Emblem in the hospital.

As much as Nathan Seymour enraged him, Yuri had grown sick of letting the man make himself a burnt offering, at Yuri's own hands, to a hollow ideal. Yuri had resolved after his anger cooled, after their last encounter on the roof, that he would not do Seymour any further injury, a resolution he'd already broken. He was tired of this game, of Seymour flinging himself repeatedly into the fire, and of the way his own judgment had grown clouded and irrational over the course of this... acquaintance. 

He should never have accepted that first challenge.

He should never have agreed to visit Nathan Seymour in the hospital, either.

His assistant had suggested it. No hero had ever been injured this severely in an encounter with Lunatic, and there was a card that someone had passed around the office for those who worked with Hero TV. Yuri had looked at it, when it was laid on his desk, as if it were a dead mouse, while Melissa continued her sales pitch. He should go speak to Fire Emblem, bring him the get-well card, and see if he wanted to make a statement for the Hero TV archives. Yuri had looked at the card full of signatures from people Seymour would never have met, and tried to think of a way to say no, but his hands throbbed and he couldn't come up with an excuse. "All right," he said, finally, ungraciously.

"And I'll try to find the space heater while you're out," she said. He stared at her blankly. "You must be cold. You haven't taken off your gloves all day."

"Yes, of course," he said. "But just my hands. Poor circulation, I suppose." He'd burned his palm, blocking Seymour's punch and holding his fist still; he was taking the pain as a sort of hair shirt, the mirror to Seymour's injured hand.

"Well, you can warm your hands at the space heater," she said. "I'll send you the hospital info."

Melissa's question had made him aware, though, that just covering his hands wasn't enough, so he kept his overcoat on as he trudged through the hospital. His excuse would be that he planned to leave right away. It wasn't too late to just drop the card in the trash and go back to the office, he reminded himself as he stepped off the elevator, but he knew he wasn't going to do that. 

He knocked pointlessly at the open door, then called out, "Excuse me?"

"Oh, I'm really not fit to see visit— Judge _Petrov?"_

Yuri felt some of his own dread evaporate at the look of astonishment on Seymour's face. "Not who you were expecting, I take it."

"Can't say that you are, no." Bereft of makeup, his face faintly shadowed with stubble, Seymour looked ill-at-ease. It didn't suit him, even if Yuri found his features more attractive this way. "What brings you here, your honor?"

Yuri produced the get-well card. "Best wishes from the Lunatic task force and the Hero TV coordinator's office," he said. "I'm not quite sure why I was selected to deliver it. I suspect they wanted me out of the office for some reason."

"Most likely." Seymour accepted the card in his bandaged right hand, smiling slightly. "You're the boss, after all. Hard to get away with ordering margaritas at lunch when you're around."

Yuri wasn't quite sure what to say to that — he _hoped_ they weren't drinking at lunch, but that would just prove the point — and cast about for a topic of conversation or a reason to depart. "Is your injury serious?"

Seymour shrugged his uninjured shoulder. "I should be out in a day or two, if the skin graft takes. I'll be on medical leave for six weeks or so. What can I say — 'debridement' is one of those words that takes on a whole new meaning once you've experienced it firsthand."

"I know," Yuri said. Only too well. Seymour was looking at him, though, an eyebrow cocked, observing. "I was badly burned in an accident when I was in my teens," Yuri explained. It was an honest answer, albeit incomplete. It was also dangerously close to the truth he'd already told the man, but he hoped he'd left out his age that time. 

"My sympathies, then," Seymour said. "I know exactly how it is."

And had known, for months, in fact, if not to this degree. "I should probably go," Yuri said. "You may be expecting other visitors."

"No, I asked everyone to stay away," Seymour said. "I don't like being seen like this."

Yuri resisted the urge to ask why. He saw nothing wrong with the man's appearance at present. But he understood wanting to be seen in only a certain way; constructing an appearance, a persona, and maintaining it. Or a pair of them. "I apologize, then," Yuri said. 

Seymour dismissed that with a flick of his hand. "You were on a mission of mercy. I just wish I had my face on, that's all. But I won't keep you."

Yuri nodded. "All right. Take care."

The temptation to _talk_ to Seymour — to continue the discussions that had developed out of their fights, to get to know the man without the expectation of violence — was strong, but far, far too risky to indulge. He'd been too honest, in recent encounters. He'd given too much away. If Yuri Petrov got to know Nathan Seymour, the similarities between Yuri's own story and Lunatic's would soon be glaringly apparent, or if he attempted to disguise his own past, he'd inevitably be caught in a lie or tripped up by the details.

That temptation, and the sight of Seymour in the hospital bed, both nagged at him as he continued his afternoons' work. Yuri was used to seeing Nathan Seymour exactly as he wished to be seen: as Fire Emblem, for the most part, a mass of sculpted muscle for all the feminine curlicues and flourishes. Or as Nathan Seymour, the energy tycoon, well-dressed, self-possessed, and flamboyant, too rich and powerful to care what others thought of him. Not as an injured man in a hospital bed, vulnerable and all too human, face bare except for the stubble that he normally fought back vigorously — as the entire city knew, if they'd cared to remember, courtesy of Wild Tiger's dramatic attempt to reclaim his name.

Yuri had remembered. He'd been aware of Seymour, as of all the heroes; the fellow flame user had snagged his attention early, while he was still establishing his files on the heroes before beginning his work as Lunatic. Yuri had opted, then, not to dwell on him, on the way Fire Emblem was the opposite side of the coin, all good fortune and warm colors. He'd been somewhat frustrated, even before that, that Fire Emblem was "the gay hero," that such a stereotype had been selected. Or that the gay hero had elected to play such a stereotype. Fire Emblem hadn't _needed_ to blow kisses to the camera, make a point of wearing lipstick, grope other heroes at parties. 

Yuri's own identity as a gay man was almost entirely theoretical. He didn't care for clubs and bars, and he didn't _like_ people enough to bother dating. The odds of finding someone worth his time were remote, and not worth the trouble. He hadn't been with a man since law school, when his mother had thrown a frightening tantrum on being introduced to his boyfriend. She'd threatened him with his father, he'd lost his temper and reminded her that his father was dead, and poor David had gotten to see exactly how delusional and out of control Olga Petrov really was. 

The worst part, in retrospect, was that his father, at least before he started drinking, likely wouldn't have been as upset as his mother. Papa had been good friends with Poltergeist, a telekinetic hero who'd retired in the late 60s, who was out to friends and coworkers but not the public. His son might have been a different matter, granted, the focal point of more hopes and fears and projected elements of his identity, but he probably would have reacted more rationally than Mama had. Yuri wondered if things might have gone differently if he'd tried that argument instead. 

Yuri wasn't flamboyant by nature — or so he'd always believed until he began designing Lunatic — or terribly drawn to other people. His sexuality really was just a tiny part of his identity. But he could still be bothered, offended, that Hero TV had decided to represent gay NEXTs with a man as unlike him in every way as possible. 

Or he could get to know the man, learn what was behind the effeminacy and the public facade, how much was real and how much an act. He could learn that the frivolous billionaire playboy was capable of seriousness and a fairly alarming degree of self-sacrifice, and draw altogether too close to him for his own good.

 

 

The day he was discharged from the hospital, Nathan finally got a chance to shave and make himself up to his own satisfaction. He was a bit surprised to be greeted by Barnaby Brooks Jr. and not by the young man he employed to tend to his collection of cars, but he didn't let it throw him. He greeted Barnaby as his rescuer, threw his arms around Barnaby's neck, and kissed him on the cheek.

"It's good that you're feeling better," Barnaby responded to that, diplomatically. 

"You know it, honey. Can you get my bag?" The overnight bag Veronica had brought him wasn't that heavy, but he was supposed to be careful with his shoulder. He wasn't supposed to go around lifting it much, for instance, like he had when he'd greeted Barnaby.

"Of course. Have you eaten?"

"You are my _knight in shining armor,_ Handsome." All the more so since Barnaby was, left to his own devices, fairly selective about the restaurants he frequented, the wines he drank, and the like — more so than Tiger, bless his heart — and the Indian restaurant he selected was excellent. They were shown to a private room, where Nathan wolfed down the first decent meal he'd had since lunch the day of the Lunatic encounter, not even bothering to be ladylike, while Barnaby filled him in on what he'd missed. Much of the news aftermath of the Lunatic encounter had reached him in the hospital, but there were still blanks, and specifics, to be filled in.

"Kotetsu pulled his hand off of you while I went in to get you away from him, and that was the end of it, really," Barnaby explained. "Lunatic burned off the wire, and just disappeared." Nathan just nodded, not terribly surprised, but then he remembered that much of the Tiger and Barnaby partnership had been dogged by a sort of grudge match with Lunatic. Normally he wouldn't have left just after they arrived.

"Maybe I hurt him more than I thought," Nathan said. "Where _is_ your partner, by the way?"

"His daughter's in town," Barnaby said. "I wanted to make sure they had at least a bit of father-daughter time without me tagging along. And I wanted a chance to talk to you."

"Oh, Handsome, I didn't know you cared!" Barnaby just smiled thinly at that, and Nathan let his girlishly-clasped hands drop. "You used to be a lot more fun to tease."

"Really? That seems unlikely. Fire Emblem, I have to ask — how many unrecorded encounters have you had with Lunatic?"

Nathan picked up his fork, using it to chase the last few grains of biryani around his plate. "What makes you ask?"

"His approach was different this time. Normally he'd position himself much higher, though that could be situational. Regardless, he usually goes for altitude and keeps at range. You were able to get in close with him, and _stay_ close, which is something that Kotetsu and I have always had difficulty with. And usually he'd attack the criminal immediately."

"He's been inactive for a while," Nathan hedged. "Perhaps he's off his game."

"It looked like more than that," Barnaby said. 

Nathan rubbed his chin absently. Good to have it smooth again, at any rate. He'd certainly noticed that Lunatic had dropped most of the bizarre movements and mannerisms in their private encounters. The fight on the freeway had made him realize that Lunatic had also dropped the voice he used as part of his vigilante persona. He hadn't really noticed that Lunatic had also changed his fighting style. They could attack each other at range, but it had only been up close that Nathan had succeeded in doing any real damage to Lunatic. So in a way, he was handicapping their fights.

That was actually almost insulting, because Lunatic _still_ trounced him every time they fought. 

"Why would he do that?" Barnaby asked, watching Nathan steadily.

" _That_ I can't answer, Handsome. If I knew how his mind worked..."

"You've been fighting him on your own, though."

"You caught me," Nathan admitted. 

Barnaby smiled. "It wasn't just me. Kotetsu noticed the change too, though if he drew the same conclusions I did he didn't say so." It made sense that they'd both see the change. The two of them had fought Lunatic more than the rest of the heroes had put together. "He's been inactive for... four or five months?" Barnaby said. "Or rather, he hasn't killed anyone in that time. How are your encounters with him going? I seem to remember you once said his power was stronger than yours."

"It may be, barring actual measurements. More to the point, the way it works is different, and he has amazing control over it. He uses it to fly, and seems to use it to teleport, unless that's an unrelated power." 

"Was this the first time he's injured you?"

Months and months of hiding it all, and yet he wasn't sure he could just lie outright. At least the damage from the latest burn had done away with some of the scar tissue on his shoulder; he'd look better after the skin graft despite the severity of the second burn. "Not quite. It was the first time I'd been hurt this badly. He's hard to hit, and usually he runs circles around me. I did land one solid blow on him... the second time we fought, I believe." He forced himself to take his hand away from his chin; it was a tell he'd tried to break before. "That was up close. I took a page from Tiger's book, and I suppose it paid off."

Barnaby sat back in his chair. "So he's adjusted his fighting style to give you more of a chance? How bizarre."

"He seems to like playing games," Nathan said, but he didn't think that was quite right. The wording implied that Lunatic was a cat toying with a mouse, but if anything, Lunatic was playing by the rules of a game that he could potentially lose. "I almost felt like I was getting through to him," he added, before he'd quite realized what he was saying. He felt foolish, but Barnaby just looked contemplative.

"If you were, that's more than Kotetsu's ever managed. Which is astonishing, since Kotetsu's so very articulate when he's angry."

Nathan laughed. "Now, now, don't be mean to your partner. He's not here to defend himself." He took a sip of his tea. "Do you think it's possible to get through to Lunatic?"

"Kotetsu seems to. At least, I assume he must, or he's spent a lot of time yelling at Lunatic about justice to no purpose. And..." He seemed to be considering. "I'd have to agree." Nathan watched him, hand at his chin again, thinking. He'd honestly been surprised when Barnaby hadn''t killed Jake Martinez. Tiger's influence had been enough to stop him, or so Nathan had concluded after watching the replays on TV. Barnaby had ample reason to believe that a potential killer motivated by certain circumstances could be reached, and Barnaby had been considerably more impassioned than Lunatic had ever seemed to be. Though he also hadn't spent the last two years killing regularly.

"I always thought Tiger was trying to arrest him, not reason with him."

"Maybe so. I'd have to stand by my own statement, though. Lunatic's doing this for a specific reason. Maybe I'm wrong, and he's just a lucid-sounding serial killer, but he _seems_ to have some kind of logic behind his actions. And the fact that he stopped killing during the duration of your encounters with him... did something spark this latest incident?"

"I think I pushed too hard," Nathan said, but that was just guesswork. He didn't know exactly what had set Lunatic off. 

He didn't know what he'd do at the next full moon, either. But he did know a few things. He hadn't seen Lunatic's face, not in full, but he'd seen a stripe of skin. The flames at hand, the streetlights, and the fact they were in the middle of a struggle could all have affected his perception, but he was almost sure that he'd seen someone exceptionally pale. 

And Judge Petrov hadn't taken off his gloves, not even when he fumbled the get-well card out of his coat pocket.

"We could help you bring him in," Barnaby offered, as he pulled up the long, curving drive in front of Nathan's house. 

"That's sweet of you, Handsome," Nathan said. He blew the blond a kiss once he was at the door. He didn't ever answer the offer.


	9. Chapter 9

Nathan was on medical leave from Hero TV, which didn't lessen his duties at Helios in the least, but did give him plenty of time to deal with the worried video calls from his mother, his sister, and the various extended family members who didn't know he was a hero but did know he'd been hurt. A car accident was the cover story; he'd always driven like a bat out of hell, so no one had any reason to doubt it.

His mother had always watched Hero TV through her fingers, sometimes literally, and she'd stopped watching entirely after the Jake incident. He and his sisters had rolled their eyes a little, when she wasn't around — it wasn't like he'd taken the kind of beating Tiger had, after all — but she was marginally happier that way. But it meant when something did go wrong she could imagine whatever she pleased, so he was pretty sure she'd constructed some horrible nightmare scenario where his shoulder was a charred mass of bone. Obviously he'd have to have her flown in soon so she could see he still had both arms, even though he tried to show her on the holo-screen.

His younger sister, of course, wanted to know all about Lunatic. "You were actually in there punching him!"

"You don't have to sound so _happy_ about it, Andrea." She had scarlet and gold braided into her hair as some kind of show of support. It was widely known back home that Fire Emblem was from the area, and there'd be some who remembered Nathan's own powers and connected the dots, but it still perturbed him to see her make the links as openly as all that. Not like it did anyone any good to take issue with anything any of the Seymours did to their hair. Or nails. Or faces.

"Well, I'm not happy you got hurt, but you were face-to-face with Lunatic! Mask-to-mask, anyway. Did you get a look at his face?"

"Not enough to pick him out of a lineup." He didn't think the cameras had even caught the cracks he'd spotted — there was no crew on the ground with them — but maybe she was just hoping something had been edited out of the broadcast. "Believe me, if I had, he'd be in prison by now."

"That's too bad," she said.

"Too bad I can't put him in jail? I thought you were kind of on his side."

"Maybe before he set your shoulder on fire. But no... it was kind of cathartic, you know, when he'd take down someone who really deserved it, but that didn't make it right." If only Lunatic were as easy to convince. "And that boy he killed. 'Associated with known gang members.' Yeah, because in some neighborhooods if you don't, you won't have any friends at all."

Even in a smaller city like they'd come from. "I know," he said. "The media's been pretty good about it, though. So far. Mostly human interest stories about him and his family, not playing up the gang angle." Admittedly, the less said about some of the blogs, the better. But all the photos on TV made the boy look like a smiling, slightly pudgy teddy bear. "The one guy we were really after in that car did have a warrant out for his arrest, but none of the others had done anything. The idea was that we'd catch them in the act, but you saw how that went." And if they'd all been caught in a drug deal, what then? Would the cases be dismissed for lack of evidence, would the dead boy have cut a deal with the prosecutors and emerged shaken but unharmed, or would he vanish into the prison system, only to emerge with no options but a life of crime? His mental voice had shifted to Aunt Cassandra's.

 _He'd be in prison right now,_ he'd said to Andrea of Lunatic, but he wasn't sure that was really true. If he managed to turn one of these fights around, peel off Lunatic's mask, and see a face he could describe to the police... what then? There shouldn't have been any question. He was a hero and Lunatic was a murderer. This was why heroes weren't supposed to work freelance. It was one thing to trust the judgment of a uniformed cop and another to trust the discretion of a costumed NEXT. Hell, Nathan wasn't even sure he trusted his own judgment right now regarding Lunatic. If he stopped killing... but that wasn't how these things worked. Criminals needed to be arrested, to stand trial. Pay a debt to society. Atone. Even if he didn't have much faith that anyone did much atoning or rehabilitation in prison, that was how the system he'd been arguing for all this time was supposed to work, even if it often didn't work at all.

A judge would know that better than anyone. A judge who'd worked as a prosecutor since law school; Nathan had looked up Yuri Petrov's short public bio, and the Justice Department CV. There was no mention of a dead father, or the ability to fire rocket fuel from his palms, but Nathan hadn't expected anything of the sort. All those arguments about law and order, made to a judge.

 _He's got to live with himself,_ Nathan remembered his mother saying, resigned, shaking her head over some shameful acquittal on the news. _If there's any justice in the world..._ His grandmother would sometimes mutter about judgment day, but never where Mama could hear. She didn't like anyone talking about hell under her roof. He'd absorbed it all, though, growing up; the general idea that there wasn't a lot of justice to be had, so you just sort of hoped it all came out even in the end, on some kind of cosmic scale. That maybe there was judgment waiting, that even if a killer walked, or never even stood trial, never lost his badge or served a day in prison, maybe he'd be tormented in his heart or his afterlife. Nathan still had sleepless nights of his own over power mishaps that hadn't killed so much as a fly.

If Lunatic really felt it, saw the full horror of what he'd done, living with his killings might be enough. Enough to satisfy Nathan. But he'd put himself through all this to prove the point that questions like guilt and innocence and punishment shouldn't be decided by just one person. He couldn't be sure that the man _would_ feel guilt, or could. Remorse couldn't be quantified or proven. That was why they had trials instead.

He'd thought he was making the argument that a justice system was needed. That Lunatic shouldn't try to tear down the old one unless he had a replacement in mind. But if his guess was right, Lunatic was working both sides. Nathan wasn't sure what to make of that. Was he supporting the old system until reform happened, or trying to undermine it from within? Or was he killing out of bitterness that he spent most of his time reviewing the damage the heroes did to the city in the name of protecting it, rather than passing judgment on murderers? Did he ever preside over criminal court? _That,_ at least, Nathan could check.

And Lunatic's arguments about what justice should really do had been getting to him. No, he wasn't buying into that eye-for-an-eye code, but he needed to decide all over again what he _did_ believe, so he'd at least know whether he felt justice had been done once Lunatic had been caught and tried and found guilty. It wasn't his job as a hero to determine who was guilty and who was innocent, but he was a citizen of Stern Bild, a member of society. He was a person who believed things about justice and the law. A person who had every right to believe things, anyway, even if he was between certainties right now.

What was it Lunatic had said, about considering his mission a privilege? The implication had been that Lunatic himself didn't enjoy what he did. Fine, then. He should stop.

Lunatic should, by his own standards, burn to death, dozens of times over. But even if the justice system allowed that, Nathan wouldn't sentence anyone to that. Certainly not someone he _knew._

Nathan knew Lunatic, now. He might not know with any certainty that Lunatic was Judge Petrov — there might be dozens of tall, lean, extremely pale men with deep voices working at the Justice Department — but he'd come to know the person behind the mask. He'd learned that Lunatic, or rather, the person playing Lunatic, was rational on some level. Despite his rhetoric, he wasn't just some ritualistic serial killer, and while Nathan wasn't certain that anything he'd said had persuaded his opponent, he thought Lunatic was _capable_ of being persuaded. He didn't think he'd wasted the past months, that all of his injuries had been for nothing.

He was trying to talk himself out of arresting Lunatic. He wasn't investigating Judge Petrov, taking his suspicions to the authorities or to Agnes, spreading the knowledge around. He hadn't set out to get an arrest or uncover Lunatic's identity, true; he'd just wanted to win a fight, vent some frustrations, show off a bit, if he was honest. But he'd shifted his mission once, made this about justice and the law. He'd taken a stand and now he was wavering. He had the resources to investigate, to delve into police records — once you had a name, deaths by burning were a lot easier to search — as if he didn't want the proof. He'd let himself come to sympathize with a murderer, and now he was trying to find a reason to let the man escape justice. So what would Lunatic make of that? Was Nathan coming around to true justice, or just as fickle and lacking in conviction as any other hero except for the half of them Nathan knew to be true believers?

And what was he planning to do? Confront a dangerous madman with a hunch as to his identity, and hope Lunatic would turn tail and run rather than killing him to preserve his secret? Keep it to himself, and keep up their monthly appointments, in the obviously deluded hope that he'd emerge as the clear victor one of these days?

The full moon was coming up, and Nathan still wasn't allowed to lift weights. For the first time, he was actually slightly afraid of the next encounter, wondering if Lunatic had decided it was time to finish him off. If he was done with doubts and debates. But Nathan Seymour had never in his life let anyone intimidate him out of doing what he'd decided to do, whether that was taking another boy to the prom or facing down a serial killer who'd scarred him for life. He wasn't going to start now.

He wasn't going to start being reckless now, either. He hand-wrote a letter outlining his suspicions of Judge Petrov, and went in person to place it in a safe-deposit box. He notified his lawyers he'd updated what he called his dead file; they didn't need details. If he died, and he was right, he was going to take Lunatic down with him. And if he was wrong, he'd be dead and wouldn't have to feel foolish.


	10. Chapter 10

Nathan saw no need to change into his costume. It wasn't like he was in any shape to be fighting, and if Lunatic felt like attacking anyway, the minimal protection afforded by his suit wouldn't help him much. He left behind his wrist-PDA when he left the office shortly before sunset; if he missed a call, he missed a call, but there shouldn't be any emergencies with him officially on leave. He was more concerned that Tiger and Barnaby, or Sky High — with or without Agnes's approval — would decide to assist him with Lunatic. If there _was_ any chance of getting through to Lunatic, he didn't want to torpedo it that way.

Getting through to Lunatic. To do what? Persuade him to stop killing? Ask him to turn himself in? To concede defeat in their long argument about justice? 

 

The burns on Yuri's left palm and fingers had resisted healing, blistering and weeping and scabbing and cracking wherever his hand bent or flexed, but they were improving, slowly. In an odd way, the heat of his flames through the glove was a comfort, if an irritation as well, like worrying at a wisdom tooth as it emerged or gnawing on a hangnail. He'd have to change the dressing when he got home, as he had to do whenever he put that hand to any use at all. Propelling himself through the night sky, he wondered, not for the first time this month, if he should eliminate these meetings. It took mutual agreement, after all; Nathan Seymour couldn't exercise his urge for self-destruction if Lunatic never showed up. Or never attacked, never defended himself, simply evaded and then departed, but Yuri wasn't entirely sure he trusted his own temper, not when he came equipped for a fight. 

And the great danger of NEXTs, the reason they were so feared, was that many of them were _always_ equipped for a fight. Yuri, perhaps, even more than most. 

He'd left the crossbow and bolts in his lair, again, but if it came to a fight he still outmatched Seymour, even when they were both uninjured. _Don't let it come to that,_ he'd been chiding himself, _remove yourself from the situation._ But in the end, Yuri wanted to see Seymour again. Not on false pretenses, this time, but on the grounds they'd established, Lunatic and Fire Emblem. 

He wanted to see Seymour again, and yet he felt his heart sink when he spotted a human form silhouetted on the roof. He took in details as he drew closer; no cape, street clothes, more casual than Yuri had yet seen on him. A red hooded sweatshirt and jeans. If not for the pink, high-heeled boots he'd almost pass for one of the young men from the group Yuri had fired at a few weeks ago. Maybe that was deliberate.

_"Why?"_ he demanded, before his feet even touched the roof. His hand throbbed.

"You think I'd give up now?" Seymour asked. There was a smile in his voice, though the hood shadowed his face, making his expression unreadable.

"I wish you had some sense of self-preservation," Yuri said. His voice was low, but he didn't really care if Seymour heard him or not. Under the cloak, he held his left hand in his right. If he found this pain nearly unbearable at times, how much worse... he didn't want to follow that thought to any of its logical sequels.

"And I wish you'd stop burning people to death. We can't always get what we want."

"I _had_ stopped. In practice, if not in principle. If that were enough for you..."

"Maybe it would be." 

Yuri drew a step closer, his throbbing hand forgotten, all his attention on Nathan Seymour. 

"I never wanted to sit in judgment on anyone. I wanted to fight it out with you, because you made me angry, and I would have liked to beat you at your own game and bring you in. Or just beat you, period." Seymour pushed his hood back, and flashed a smile. "But the longer we talk, the more I feel like I'd have to pass judgment on you just to arrest you. I left behind my PDA to keep any of the others from following me." 

This _idiot._ He had no reason to believe Lunatic didn't want to finish the job. Seymour wasn't a stupid man, so why did he keep acting like he was? "Why are you so _reckless?_ " Yuri demanded before he could stop himself.

Seymour smiled, the pale pink lips quirking in the illumination from the streetlight, or just the ambient light pollution of Stern Bild. "Why do you sound like you're worried about me?"

_Because I am._ "You once asked me if I ever felt guilt, Nathan Seymour. After our last encounter, I did."

In the half-light, he couldn't read the nuances of the expression on the other man's face, could only make out the general planes of his sharp cheekbones and the light color of his lips. "Was that why you visited me in the hospital?" Seymour asked, finally. "Salving your conscience? Or were you just testing me, pushing the game that much further?"

The world was very still and very slow, yet Yuri couldn't prevent himself from speaking. "How did you—" The one eventuality he hadn't considered. He had contingency plans for his mother's care, his own death, his capture in costume or his arrest in his office, but he'd never braced himself for a face-to-face confrontation. Seymour had the knowledge, and now it was up to Yuri to react. Or rather, it had been, and Yuri had made his move and shown his hand.

It would have made sense for all the heroes to spring out of hiding now, for helicopters to swing into view, but Yuri had absolute faith that Seymour was keeping this between the two of them.

The heartbeat passed, and the pale lips curved into a smile. "I didn't," the hero said. "I didn't know, if that's where you were going. It was a wild guess, even when you stopped deliberately altering your voice when you were in costume. I thought about doing a search of death records, police reports, see if I could substantiate anything... probably would have tried tomorrow, if you'd stonewalled me but let me walk away."

Seymour had considered that option as well. Yuri could kill him, right now, the one witness. He could protect his secret, continue his mission, and leave Seymour's friends to mourn him. Because, of course, _that_ would be justice. He could kill Seymour, and regret it for the rest of his life, or he could take off his mask and destroy his own life instead.

The tiny latches on either side of his head that held the mask closed were tricky. He needed his nails to open them, at least when his hands were shaking like this, so he had to peel off first one glove, dropping it to the gravelly surface of the roof, and then the other, then fumble at the sides of his mask. Not the dramatic reveal or blaze of glory he might have preferred, if he'd ever imagined this. Finally, though, the faceplate sprung open, and he pulled off his helmet, the weight of the dark stone in his stomach only increasing. He'd been sweating, and the cold night air on his bare skin almost made his teeth chatter, but perhaps that was an emotional reaction rather than a physical one. 

Seymour's lips parted slightly, a soundless _oh,_ when Yuri pulled off the first glove, then curved into a smile. He waited until Yuri lifted the helmet, though, to speak. "I wasn't expecting that."

Yet it had seemed to Yuri like the only possible next step. "I was honestly put up to the hospital visit by my admin assistant," Yuri admitted, feeling hysteria bubbling beneath the surface. So polite, as always, and never, ever surprised, even when the herald of Thanatos spoke about office administration and get-well cards. "I couldn't come up with a reason to refuse. Was it the mention of a burn that gave it away?"

"The gloves. And your skin. The mask cracked." 

No need to acknowledge the double meaning there. "Are you going to arrest me?"

"Would you let me?" But without waiting for an answer, Seymour continued, "I wish I knew. I was almost hoping you'd call my bluff. Preferably by running, I have to say, not by roasting me on the spot. I had no proof. I kept putting off getting it."

"You had enough to begin an investigation," Yuri said. "To keep me under surveillance. You could have gone to the police the moment you made the connection — the moment you realized I worked in the Justice Department. Or you could have arranged something through Hero TV."

"Hero TV — I suppose I could, but...." Seymour shook his head. "And the police? Knowing you were in the department, it seemed risky. If I made a move, it might alert you. I didn't know if you were a paralegal or a judge, how much pull you had or how much information access. And once I made the real connection—" He broke off with a shrug. "I didn't come totally unprepared, but you don't need all the boring details. I still didn't have proof, but I had plans, you might say."

Plans. More than Yuri could claim under the circumstances. This was the one eventuality he hadn't considered; a discovery of his identity that didn't lead immediately to pursuit or arrest. He was improvising, for the first time in years. He'd taken such pleasure in being the only one in the know, during all of those task force meetings and police debriefings, and now he was entirely in someone else's hands. "And now?"

"Now... I propose we go someplace warmer. Have a cup of coffee someplace we can sit down, because I suspect it's going to be a long night." Seymour looked him up and down. "I don't suppose you fit a change of clothes under that thing? Something less eye-catching?"

Yuri burned away his mantle and spread his arms slightly, as if to bow. "I don't have much room," he said. "I leave my change of clothes in my car." It was the riskiest part of his night; he was well aware of how many cases were finally solved because one person glanced out a window or took a walk at just the right moment, when a criminal thought he was acting in secret. 

"Go get them," Seymour suggested. "I'll wait."

An opportunity to run. He knew what he was offering, surely. "I'll try not to be long," he said, checking to be sure his hair was still tucked safely inside his collar before he replaced his helmet. The gloves weren't as important, so he left them on the roof as he propelled himself upward.

A few buildings away, though, he looked back as he changed directions, and saw a smudge of orange flame. Seymour destroying the gloves for him. His mind was already made up as to what he should do, so the sight dispelled no doubts, but it was a different kind of comfort from the force of the flames in his hands.

 

As always, he removed the helmet and immediately destroyed it, a burst of searing heat to burn away the paint and melt the electronics, followed by simply smashing the plaster base and grinding the largest fragments underfoot. The jacket, though designed to resist even extreme heat, was not Lunatic-proof, and he could generate temperatures high enough to burn it to a shriveled, blackened fragment. The acrid smoke was never pleasant, and a risky calling card of his to boot, but better than leaving recognizable evidence of his movements. 

He rarely felt the cold, a seeming side-effect of his powers, but he was shivering violently tonight. He hurried into the shirt he'd worn to work that day before he got behind the wheel, and for once turned on the disused heater in his car. He didn't dare risk flying with his face exposed, not while he was wearing half of Lunatic's costume. 

Of course he was going to return. Whether he was declining an offer or fulfilling Seymour's trust, he couldn't have said, but he was going to navigate streets he normally only saw from above and return. 

Seymour was waiting by an expensive-looking, and, naturally, very red sports car that could not possibly have looked more out of place in the dingy, neglected industrial surroundings. Yuri's own gray luxury sedan looked modest and dowdy next to it, and he felt strangely self-conscious about his disheveled hair and unbuttoned dress shirt. And, as soon as he opened his car door, cold. Seymour unzipped his sweatshirt.

"What—" Yuri began, but Seymour shook his head. 

"You're either freezing or going into shock," he said. "You need it more than I do, anyway." He was wearing a distinctly tight black sweater underneath, Yuri noted, as he draped the jacket over Yuri's shoulders. It was warm from his body heat and smelled faintly of some rose-based, spicy scent; Yuri was too grateful for the warmth to object to the unexpected intimacy of the gesture. He slid one arm into a sleeve, then the other. It fit surprisingly well, given that he'd thought of himself as significantly narrower and somewhat shorter than Fire Emblem.

Seymour opened the door for him, almost chivalrous, and Yuri settled himself uncomfortably into the passenger's side. "We're closer in size than I thought," he said, sounding almost thoughtful, before closing the door.

"Why are you doing this?" Yuri asked, when the other man slid gracefully into the driver's seat. 

"Why were you worried about me?" 

"Mr. Seymour—"

"Just Nathan." He was smiling, again. "I think we've known each other long enough."

"Yuri, then."

"Thank you," Nathan replied. "Your makeup's... you need to do a touch-up?"

Yuri almost smiled — of course he'd notice. "No need," he said. "The mask always rubs it off. I only wear the makeup to cover up the scar so it doesn't disturb strangers or force me to answer questions. You already know the story."

"I really don't," Nathan said, quietly. "But that's up to you." He started the car, an aggressive revving sound Yuri associated more with movies than with real vehicles. He hadn't mingled much in law school, and his network had shrunk further since then. He hadn't kept in touch with any of the classmates whose careers would let them buy this kind of car.

They drove in silence for a time. Yuri had another decision to make, but it wasn't much of a decision. Nathan Seymour knew everything else about how it had happened, after all. 

"I told you that my powers manifested and killed my father," Yuri said. "Before he died, while his hand was burning, he left me with this." He approximated a chuckle. "He'd never struck me before. Sometimes he'd throw something at me, or hit the wall or the table, but he never struck me directly. Only my mother. The only time he left a mark on me was with the use of my own powers." Yuri steeled himself for a sidelong glance. The other man was watching the road, though it was possible his jaw had tightened slightly. Yuri looked down at his hand, the burns cracked again and an angry red, before closing it into a loose fist to hide the worst of the damage. "Skin grafts can only do so much, and by the time surgical techniques and my own finances could have done more to repair it, I'd chosen to take it as a badge."

Seymour — Nathan — said nothing for a long time. "I'm placing you around my age. Early 30s?" Yuri nodded. "You've had that half your life." He nodded again. "I suppose that explains..."

"My costume?" Yuri suggested. And much more that he wasn't entirely sure he wanted to discuss, just then. A misstep, perhaps. He was off-balance, disoriented and at a disadvantage. He didn't even know their intended destination. If Nathan wanted to pursue the subject, Yuri certainly couldn't stop him. 

But he left it at that, and they drove in silence. Yuri spent most of the ride trying to formulate new ways to ask _why?_ Not all of the questions were aimed at his companion.


	11. Chapter 11

Nathan headed for Honeybuns, a little bakery he'd started up as a sideline a few years back. He'd once claimed to have named after Rock Bison, who hadn't been wildly flattered for some reason. They'd have it to themselves for a few hours before Priya and Daniel, his bakers, showed up, and the two of them would be busy in the kitchen for several hours after that. 

He unlocked the door and swept past the handful of tables and upside-down chairs. There might be some leftover pastries in the breakroom fridge, but what he wanted was coffee. "Anything to drink?" he asked the judge — Yuri, Lunatic — looking up after a moment when there was no response. The judge was still standing by the door, looking faintly lost.

"I don't bite," Nathan said. "Usually. Unless you'd like me to."

Yuri's eyebrows shot up, and Nathan grinned at the sight. "Aren't you used to me, Your Honor? At least by reputation? The breakroom's that way," he added, jerking his head towards the door behind the counter. "Coffee, tea, water? My latte will take a second. And we may have something to eat if you'd like." The more he inhaled the scent of baked sweets that never dispersed here, the more he wondered if there were any of those strawberry croissants left over. 

"Tea," Yuri said after a moment. He sounded dazed. 

Yuri Petrov. Nathan watched him move slowly, deliberately, through the narrow area behind the counter. The lower half of the Lunatic costume was recognizable: tight, flaring pants, with the stripes down the front and the odd cutouts over the boots, and the boots themselves, with their pointed, slightly curved toes. Maybe more significantly, it was out of place beneath a perfectly mundane dress shirt and borrowed sweatshirt a size too big. Nathan thought of exhibits in court, comparing a photo of Petrov like this to footage of Lunatic. 

Yuri stopped at the break room door, his hand on the doorknob. "None of this feels real," he said. He opened the door, and Nathan saw the light go on, heard the footsteps moving further in. There was something to that, but it had to be even more surreal for Yuri than it did for Nathan. The judge had deliberately and undeniably given away his biggest secret after falling for a transparent bluff. And it would have been so easy to dispose of the only witness in a near-untraceable way. Untraceable enough. Nothing that would link Yuri Petrov to Lunatic or to the death of Nathan Seymour. But now, unmasked, they'd walked together into a business Nathan owned, right underneath the security camera. 

The security tapes were just compiled in the event of a break-in; he didn't have anyone watching the tapes live, not here, and they were discarded every three months. The bakery wasn't in a high-crime area, and the cupcake recipes weren't high-level corporate secrets. But if he was killed here, Lunatic's distinctive flames would tie him to the crime scene, and the cameras would link Yuri Petrov. Nathan had been improvising since Yuri had unmasked, so the bakery had been a spur-of-the-moment choice, but it suited his needs perfectly. At this point, he doubted he was in any danger, though Lunatic had proved unpredictable before, but it was insurance. Yuri might even have noticed the camera and followed the same train of thought, though if not, Nathan didn't intend to point it out. 

It was just insurance. But it was nice to know he had it, as he revisited his high school barista training. The staff had reorganized since he was in here last, so he had no idea any longer where they kept the to-go cups. It'd be ceramic mugs for both of them.

Yuri was sitting in one of the plastic breakroom chairs, slightly slumped, when Nathan came in with his own steaming latte in one hand and a mug of hot water, the string of a bag of Earl Grey dangling over the edge, in the other. "I should have asked how you take it, but I only have so many hands," he said. "Sugar, honey and creamer are all on the condiments bar across from the register." He slid the mug over to the other man. "And there's milk and cream in the glass-fronted fridge behind the counter, if you like that better."

"I see," Yuri said, rousing himself after a moment.

Nathan listened with half his attention for the jingling of the front door, but after a minute or two, Yuri returned with a spoon and a plastic honey bear. And the mark of his dying father's hand on his face, the makeup that normally masked it a victim of sweat and friction. Could the sight of that in the mirror ever grow routine? And if not, what did that do to you? Though he supposed he had his answer in the results. Yuri settled into the chair again, moving slowly, as if uncomfortable in his skin or just in the setting.

"I take it I took you by surprise," Nathan said, and took a sip of his drink to let Yuri work himself up to an answer.

"Yes." Yuri stirred his tea, eyeing it critically, then leaned back. "I had plans in place for several possible types of defeat, but not this."

"You'd call it a defeat?"

"Wouldn't you, if our positions were reversed?"

"A cease-fire," Nathan suggested. Yuri gave that a thin smile, but didn't respond further. "So tell me," Nathan continued, seeing Yuri intended to let the silence grow awkward. "I could be considered an accessory for not turning you in, couldn't I?"

"I suppose," Yuri said. "Technically, yes. But a man in your position would have no real need to worry."

A man in his position. As if he hadn't had to drive to a prison to prove himself innocent when a fire NEXT killed three men in their cell. As if he could just pull the 'do you know who I am' card when he got pulled over rather than keep his hands in full view on the steering wheel. Nathan sighed. Maybe he should have just worn his PDA. Let Agnes track him and send Tiger and Barnaby to swoop in, catch Stern Bild's most wanted criminal, and vault back into the first league. If he found himself missing his fights with Lunatic too much he could always visit the judge in prison, to carry on the discussions without all the grievous bodily harm. It would have taken the decision out of his hands. He could probably have made himself live with the fact it was the easy way out. "I think you may be overestimating Stern Bild's law enforcement," he finally said, dipping every word in all the obvious tact he could.

"This would be a discussion between the prosecutors and your lawyers. No doubt they're the best in the business. Believe me, you'd be operating at a significant advantage." Yuri dipped the spoon into the mug of tea and fished out the teabag. "So why haven't you turned me in?"

"I wish I knew." Nathan sipped his latte. "You've gotten to me, over the months. You've got me thinking in your terms, more and more. Trying to decide whether arresting you would see justice done."

"Whereas I've begun to question my own beliefs due to your influence. Or if not beliefs, at least my ways of putting them into practice."

"That was the idea." In the silence, he heard the chiming of the spoon against the teacup as Yuri stirred in honey. Lunatic, tired and dazed and wearing Nathan's own hoodie, squeezing a little plastic bear around the middle. "If I arrested you, what would you do? Plead insanity?"

Another silence. "Not that," Yuri said finally. "I don't know, now. I used to have a plan. Should I begin work on another?"

Nathan shook his head. "I wish I could believe you felt guilty and not just doubtful." 

"I almost wish I could," Yuri said. "If I did, perhaps I could just surrender." He took a sip of his tea. "You were not what I expected, Nathan Seymour."

"What did you expect?"

"A frivolous hedonist, challenging me over a petty grudge and sure to give up once he realized he was outmatched. The classic playboy billionaire."

"Doesn't the classic model sleep with women and inherit his money?" Yuri was looking into his tea mug, and his expression didn't flicker. "Or were those just more things you didn't expect?"

"I knew your sexual preference. You made it difficult not to, you realize."

"Not to get repetitive, but that _was_ the idea. Why do you think I became a hero?"

"As a _role model?_ "

Nathan bristled at the skepticism in the other man's tone. "When I was fourteen, do you know what I would have given to see someone like me as a hero?"

"I might have some small idea." That was when he looked up, gray eyes meeting Nathan's. "Not to the extent you do, I'm certain." 

"I see." Maybe Yuri wasn't quite what Nathan had expected, either. He hadn't had many encounters with the judge, except in his role as Hero TV curator, but he could read between the lines. 

No, he _knew_ this man wasn't what he'd expected, because he hadn't expected to empathize with him in the least. 

 

They'd started out talking in their usual circles about the justice system, about justice in general, but something had shifted, beyond the fact that they weren't attacking each other. The conversation became less a circle than a series of loops; justice led to law school led to undergraduate education. They'd probably had some overlap in their time spent on the Stern Bild University campus, they concluded. "Was your hair pink then?" Yuri asked, and Nathan laughed. 

"Honey, it was whatever color I felt like that week. I'm surprised it didn't fall out with all I did to it."

"I wonder if I ever saw you," Yuri said. 

"You'd probably have remembered. Was your hair long back then?" 

Somehow Yuri found himself talking about his mother's mental state, her delusions, her fear of him. "When the whole point was to keep anyone from hurting her," he said, bitterly. "But after fifteen years, sometimes I _want_ to. The fact she still sees him as a good husband and father, after all he did, and thinks _I'm_ the threat to her..."

"You lied," Nathan said. "You do feel guilt."

Yuri stared at his empty tea mug. "Perhaps. Over her, at any rate. I... my father haunts us both, but I don't..." He stopped himself. He didn't want Nathan to know how literally he'd meant that sentence. "It's self-serving, too. I don't want her to tell strangers about my powers."

"If she's as bad as you say, it seems like a very self-loathing kind of self-serving behavior." He shifted in his chair, leaning back slightly, but without any appearance of relaxing. "What about your latest kill? Daniel Miranda?"

Yuri thought of the news reports, the young man's mother sobbing to the cameras that he was a good boy. "That was an accident," he said. "I regret the young man's death, but he associated with criminals—"

"I can think of at least two heroes that could have described, too, when they were his age," Nathan said, and Yuri couldn't have missed the hard edge to his voice. "You think that merits the death penalty, now? And here I always thought you had a soft spot for Tiger."

Yuri looked at the mug between his hands, the centimeter of tepid tea growing colder in the bottom. "He interested me," Yuri said. "He reminded me of someone. And he seemed to be the only hero with any ideals backing up his actions. I didn't know you then." He lifted the mug, draining the last of the cold and now too-sweet tea. "That is why I regret the boy's death. I know he had committed no crime yet."

"It's not 'yet.' It's about the fact that two boys just like that grew up to be—" 

"If I could take that death back I would!"

"It doesn't matter if he would have grown up to be a hero or a janitor. Forget Tiger. Bison's not one of the ones who talks about justice all the time, or even thinks about it as far as I know. But he was going to put himself between you and those 'sinners' you were aiming at. He's the one who convinced me to get CPR training. And if you'd gotten him by accident when he was sixteen it wouldn't have mattered to you, because he was a criminal."

"Did I say it didn't matter?" He'd been through all of this with himself, many times, after the second kill, while he was considering his decision. "Would you like a scene? Should I break down, overcome with remorse? I did not enter on this path lightly."

Nathan passed his hand over his face wearily. "Fine. Whatever you want. Yes, I would like to see you break down."

"You may need to wait for some time. I spent a great deal of time preparing myself for this. After—" He stopped himself, but too late. 

But instead of pressing, Nathan stood. "I could use a refill. More hot water for you?"

"Please."

He already knew he'd tell the story when Nathan returned. He just needed to decide precisely how.

 

When Nathan returned with a mug in each hand, he wasn't entirely surprised when Yuri spoke before he'd even seated himself. "It was four years ago," Yuri began, and Nathan kept his expression neutral as he settled back into his chair.

"I'd presided over a case — a man shot his girlfriend, and left her to bleed out in her apartment. He said he'd been drunk, that they'd struggled over the gun, and he hadn't realized how seriously she'd been injured. They'd been in the midst of a bad breakup. Apparently it's quite common for men to punch women in the face during bad breakups. He was acquitted. I'm sure you see where this is going." Nathan nodded, but didn't speak. "He was acquitted, and I took to driving by his house at night, thinking about my father. One night I got a call on my cell phone while in his neighborhood. My mother was upset that I was out past my curfew. She seems to believe I'm eternally sixteen. I pulled over to take the call. After it was over, I was upset, and stepped out of the car to take a walk and calm down. I didn't consciously choose to walk past the killer's apartment building, but once I was there I did choose to walk past the doors, looking at the numbers." 

He covered his face with his hand, touching the scar. Nathan didn't dare sip his own drink; he didn't want to disturb the other man, remind him that anyone else was present, because at the moment he seemed not to be aware. "I didn't use my powers for years after my father's death," he said. "It made me sick to try. But when I was in law school I took a seminar on NEXTs and the law, and I decided I had to learn to control my power for fear of another accidental flare-up. That was how I learned I could use it for flight, or to... to rearrange matter, I suppose you could say. That was what I did this time. I walked through the man's wall, and found him asleep on his couch. The TV was still on - he'd been watching some police procedural." A smile flickered over his lips, but it was soon gone. "I don't know what I thought I was going to do when I went in there, but seeing him watching this, with no sense of the irony at all - at the time it infuriated me. Now... I wonder if he'd dropped off to sleep hours before. He could have been watching anything before he dozed off." Yuri wrapped both hands around his mug, as if to warm them. "So that was it. I didn't even realize what the burning sensation in my eyes was until he went up in flames. It felt like my eyes were dry, like I had allergies. I was outside before he even screamed, and I got into my car and drove away."

Yuri lifted his spoon to stir the tea. Nathan wondered if that was really a tremor in the other man's hands, or just wishful thinking on his own part, but it was certainly a nervous gesture, because he did nothing else with it. "And after that, you decided to become Lunatic."

"I waited. I didn't know if there would be anything in the crime scene that might remind an investigator of my father's death. When time passed and the case was ruled a freak accident, I began to investigate my father's death, to find out as much as I could about the police officers involved in the investigation. When I knew that the two men who'd responded at the scene were retired, I decided it was safe enough." Another sip of the tea. "But yes, that moment was the turning point." 

"Why the costume, then? You called us 'fellow heroes,' once, I think. Why set yourself up like a mirror to us?"

"You answered your own question. As a mirror, reflecting the flaws in the hero system..."

"That's not what I meant. Why the grudge? Why the desire to bring down the hero system, rather than the courts or the police?"

There was a long silence. Nathan watched him over the rim of his coffee mug; it had grown colder than he liked, but it warmed again quickly. "I have my reasons."

"I suppose you've told me plenty for one night," Nathan said, lightly. He'd have plenty of time to circle back to that later. 

"I've told you more than I've ever told anyone else in my life," Yuri said, his voice low. "I'm not sure you can possibly realize—"

On impulse, Nathan reached across the table, covering one long, pale hand, the uninjured one, with his. The judge's hand was thin, warm, and very dry; for one giddy second Nathan thought of suggesting moisturizer. He kept his hand there, not wanting to jerk away and reveal how impulsive and ill-considered the gesture had been, because Yuri's face, shadowed by long hair, might be unreadable right now, but his voice had given away everything. Far more, probably, than Yuri had intended. 

After a time — surely no more than a few minutes — Yuri lifted his head enough that his hair fell away from his face. Nathan squeezed his hand and withdrew to his own side of the table, sending another spark into his mug so he could finish his coffee. 

"Why the manicure?" Yuri asked, and Nathan suppressed a giggle. He hadn't been the only one thinking of irrelevant details. "It seems like it would get in the way."

"You get the hang of typing with them. I don't do a lot of punching, except when it comes to you. And the manicure... same reason as the makeup, really. A combination of habit and artistic expression."

"Artistic? Really?"

"Cosmetics are an art, like everything else," Nathan said, and was rewarded with an incredulous grin.

"Did you just quote—"

Nathan grinned at him. "Plath. I was an English major for about five weeks, back in the day. I thought I'd get a raised eyebrow at most. Is it me, or are we both getting a bit giddy?"

"I can't see the clock," Yuri said, then fished a phone out of his pocket. "Three a.m. I suppose you're right."

"I do need my beauty sleep," Nathan said. "Do you need a ride back to your car?"

"I'm afraid so."

The cleanup only took a few moments. He hoped he wouldn't spark some employee warfare over the responsibility for a breakroom left messy. And then when he opened the door, the cold air hit Nathan like a blast wave, knocking him out of the cozy, late-night bubble of talk without consequences. 

And Yuri as well, it seemed, because as he locked up, the judge asked, "Is this... it, then?"

"It," Nathan repeated.

"Can I expect an arrest, tomorrow?"

That was something he wasn't ready to answer. Hadn't been thinking of since they walked in here. "What, no full-moon rendezvous next month?"

Yuri swallowed noticeably. "I couldn't stomach attacking you again." 

Nathan studied his face. Yuri was impassive, maybe just by nature, but Nathan hadn't forgotten the way his voice had sounded. "I didn't say anything about fighting."

"You were the one who realized the legal implications," Yuri began, but Nathan headed him off.

"I don't want to be the one to suggest meeting again," he said. "It feels a bit too close to blackmail for my taste. But I'm sure you know how to contact me."

"I do," the other man admitted.

"Then that's settled. I see no reason to wait a month, unless that's how you'd prefer it," Nathan continued. What the hell was he saying? What was he shooting for now? He was supposed to arrest Lunatic. That was the point of all the battle scars, the showdowns themselves, the long attempt at persuasion. He was supposed to make Lunatic surrender, one way or another. 

They stood in silence for a moment, breath condensing in the air. "Do you have a goal in mind... Nathan?"

Nathan's hand closed around the keys in his pocket. "I'm winging it. I have been for months."

"Then why...?"

It'd feel like betraying him to call in the authorities now. Which implied that Yuri had some kind of trust in Nathan — but he did, he'd admitted as much — and that Nathan had some measure of loyalty to him. _Why,_ though? "Oh, honey, I wish I knew." 

The push of a button unlocked the passenger door for Yuri. Outside the car, Nathan waited for a moment, and tipped his head back to look at the sky. Even in Stern Bild, with all its light pollution, he could still spot Orion.


	12. Chapter 12

It was nearly dawn when Yuri let himself in, and he moved quietly through the house, as fearful of waking his mother as if he really were a teenager out past curfew. He only had a few hours to rest, but fatigue had caught up to him as he drove home, rendering the last few miles a frustrating struggle. If he were to wrap himself around a telephone pole, he thought, it would solve a number of problems at once, though it would be a shame to miss out on the drama that would ensue from a post-mortem discovery of Lunatic's identity.

In his own room, he laid sleeplessly in bed, remembering: those long pink nails in contrast to the size and strength of Nathan's hand, the solidity and warmth of it over his own. Yuri's own hand was an ugly patchwork of welts and healing skin. but all the damage Yuri had done to Nathan had been hidden from view. 

Yuri rolled over onto his back, staring into the darkness of his room. If he was caught, and Nathan's knowledge of his identity came out, being charged as an accessory to Lunatic's crimes might not be the worst of the consequences. He could escape without charges and still find his life in shreds. The scandal resulting from a trusted, respected hero shielding Lunatic from prosecution could bring down Hero TV itself, a possibility that didn't fill Yuri with the satisfaction it once would have. 

Hero TV wasn't, after all, just one cable channel and the attendant deleterious effects on justice in Stern Bild. It was an institution, like it or not. It had been responsible for thousands of arrests and the subsequent criminal cases over the years; the main reason it had survived the Maverick scandal had been the fact that the heroes themselves had helped to stop him, and that the heroes were seen as immune to the organizational corruption. If that confidence was shattered, all the arrests made by Nathan — or by _any_ hero — could be called into question. Nathan might seem immune to self-consciousness, but he'd never had to undergo a public humiliation like this might produce. And the last thing Stern Bild needed was an influx of criminals freed on technicalities.

Did anyone know about Nathan's extended battle with Lunatic? The journalist he'd spoken to would have some idea. Who else? Regardless of witnesses, there were Nathan's injuries. He would have needed to seek medical care for some of them, and that settled it. There was no point to attempting to conceal that Nathan had contact with Lunatic; a leak from his doctor's office would bring any attempt crashing down, if the affair went public. But it might be possible to conceal that Nathan knew Lunatic's real identity. Maybe they _could_ have contact, in their civilian guises. Could have contact while still protecting Nathan from the fallout should Yuri ever be caught. 

When he'd decided to become Lunatic, he'd begun making arrangements for his mother's care — investigating nursing homes, setting up a trust to pay for her stay there — though that was before they found a home-care nurse she'd accept. He didn't like to think of this as the same, as planning for the worst, making decisions for someone else's sake without their knowledge; but he couldn't deny the association, any more than he could deny the reason that his hand still seemed to feel the contact with Nathan's.

Yuri had managed roughly an hour of restless sleep, and he got through his day with endless cups of tea, upgraded reluctantly to beige, heavily adulterated coffee when he caught himself drifting off during a hearing. He felt jittery and unwell by the time he reached his car, but the drive home actually seemed to revive him slightly. He'd stayed at the Justice Tower late enough to wait out rush hour. 

At home, he made himself a sandwich and ate in the kitchen to the accompaniment of his mother's phantom dinner table chatter. He walked through the room, ignoring her — "He's so surly these days," she observed to his father — and made his way down into the basement, to his lair. His study. He had another room upstairs that had once served that purpose, but he spent almost all of his time at home in this room. He thought of sending an email, but no; if worse came to worst, better not to leave any written evidence, any sign of collusion. All that phone records would show was the date of the call, or, possibly, the location. 

This could all be explained without any reference to their other lives. He'd met Nathan Seymour at the hospital, and had wanted to call and check on his recovery later. They were in the same line of work. There was nothing suspicious about their acquaintance. It could be easy enough for Nathan to explain to his friends, for Yuri to describe to co-workers should any of them ask. He drew a deep breath, and pulled up Nathan's number from his file. 

"Yuri! What a pleasant surprise. If you'll give me juuust a moment, I can put you on video..."

"There's no need—" Of course he'd be taken off-guard within seconds. Of course Nathan had company. Nathan's life was virtually the opposite of his own in every way. 

"There," Nathan said after a moment, and Yuri's own projected screen flickered to life. Nathan was fully made-up, earrings in his ears, the collar of something pink visible at the bottom of the screen. "You look tired."

"I... am." Everything he'd been planning to say seemed to have escaped him. "I just..." _Wanted to talk to you,_ his mind supplied. "I wanted to see how you were doing. After meeting you in the hospital..." Surely there'd been a more graceful way than this to lead into the subject.

"And then running into each other at lunch the other day," Nathan said. "Small world, isn't it?"

It took him a moment. An explanation for the phone number, he supposed. "It is," he agreed. 

"It was sweet of you to call, but maybe we should talk more tomorrow? You look like you could use some rest."

"I suppose I could. Perhaps tomorrow at lunch?"

"It's a date," Nathan said cheerfully. "Talk to you then, sweetie!" 

 

Nathan flipped his phone off and returned to the table. "Was that Judge Petrov?" Blue Rose greeted him.

"What on earth?"

"I saw his name before you answered. Why was he calling you? And you were calling him Yuri?" Dragon Kid looked just as avid. He'd created a pair of little monsters, he thought. 

"His first name," Nathan said. "I ran into him yesterday at one of my little establishments, believe it or not."

"Like a nightclub?" Dragon Kid asked.

Nathan chuckled. "A bakery. He'd been to visit me in the hospital, so we started talking, and—"

"And you slipped him your phone number?" Blue Rose looked dubious.

"He's an attractive man!" Which wasn't really untrue any more than the part about the bakery was. "A little on the thin side, but not everyone can be Rock Bison." 

"He has pretty hair," she said, her tone very tactful. 

"Oh, hush. Besides, you know me. Of course I gave him my number." 

"But you haven't been on a date in months," Dragon Kid said. "Or you haven't been mentioning any, and you always did before..."

"I haven't had as much time since I started doing my own patrols," he said. He took a drink of his wine, hoping neither of them would revive the question of why, exactly, he'd taken up that habit, however intermittent it really was. 

"Now it all fits together," Blue Rose said. "He looked good to you because you're in this long dry spell—"

"Excuse me!" he objected. "Smart-mouthed little punk. I have never had a 'dry spell.' I have had occasions when I was too busy, or too preoccupied, or—" She giggled, and he breathed a sigh of relief even as he was grousing out loud about the obnoxiousness of the young. 

 

Back at home, washing off the makeup, Nathan revisited both conversations. Yuri wasn't the type of person he'd normally give his phone number, if only because there seemed likely to be a few issues with dating a judge. It wasn't like he was Wild Tiger, constantly in and out of the courtroom, but he had a feeling the Justice Department had rules in place all the same. The legal profession certainly did, anyway. His reputation for groping the male heroes aside, Nathan had never tended to mix business and pleasure. 

The girls had been right. He hadn't been on a date in months, hadn't even been to any clubs or bars for any reason other than checking on their operations. And much as he might object to Blue Rose's phrasing, maybe that did have something to do with the uneasy feeling he had when he thought of Yuri.

Or maybe he was just uncertain about socializing with a serial killer, he reminded himself. There was that possibility. Except that he found himself remembering, not any of their fights, but the way Yuri had sounded when he'd admitted that he had no one else to confide in. 

_And this is why serial killers get love letters in prison,_ he told himself as he crawled into bed. _We all think we can reform the bad boy. Stop it, Nathan. You're old enough to know better._

 

The next day, though, he called Yuri on his lunch break. "Sorry I can't get away for long enough to meet you," he said.

"I apologize," Yuri began. "I had no intention of interrupting you last night—"

"Don't worry about it! I was just out with the girls — Blue Rose and Dragon Kid," he added by way of clarification. "I explained about meeting you at the hospital, giving you my number at the bakery..."

"Even so, I didn't intend to disturb you."

"Stop that," Nathan said. "It was good to see how you were doing after— one second." He left his desk to open the door to Veronica and accept his lunch wrap from her. "After our late night," he finished, once he'd closed the door again.

"It was a bit unusual, really," Yuri said. "Granted I've kept a more regular schedule since leaving law school, but it's not as though I never keep late nights even now. I suppose those are more intellectually draining than emotionally."

"That might do it," Nathan agreed. "I meant to ask — any restrictions on us spending time together outside of work?" 

"Oddly, no," Yuri said. "Nothing on the HR level. I suppose because Hero TV is largely a separate entity from the Justice Department. I would have to recuse myself from any cases involving you, of course, but that's standard."

"Good to know," Nathan said, and left it at that. He didn't want to suggest things, not with something like this that he could, in theory, hold over Yuri's head. And not with his cover story for the girls suggesting that he might be pursuing the other man. That was a question he was still dancing around, mentally. 

"I..." Yuri trailed off into silence, and Nathan looked away from the screen for a moment. Awkward silences were not his native habitat. More the opposite. "I apologize. I shouldn't have have called at all."

"I did suggest you call me," Nathan said. "I..." To hell with it, he thought. "I don't want to so much as suggest blackmail — meet me here, because you know I have something on you. I wanted to leave that in your hands." He took a deep breath, like he was about to step off the high diving board at the pool. "I've had whole relationships that didn't involve as much talking as you and I did night before last. Naturally it's awkward to go from that to pretending we just met, like we'd have to do anywhere in public or anywhere we can be overheard. I'm in my office, by the way. Completely soundproof." 

"My car. Preparing to go purchase lunch somewhere." There was a sort of wry twist to the judge's mouth. "It requires considerable deliberation, of course."

"Of course," Nathan agreed. "You wouldn't want to buy an impulsive... hamburger?" 

"Quesadilla," Yuri said. "Assuming the elusive food truck is still in place when I get there."

Nathan eyed his wrap. "Good choice."

"Perhaps... dinner?" Yuri suggested. "If cars are private enough?" 

Private. Dinner. Nathan tried to keep the habitual wicked smile off his face, but it was a challenge. Their conversation in the middle of the night had been... intimate, really, in a completely different way than what was coming to mind right now. "Are you asking me on a date, Your Honor?"

"Would you like me to?"

"You realize you've robbed me of the opportunity to say 'we've got to stop meeting like this'? I feel cheated." He leaned back in his chair. "I think I know just the place for dinner."

 

They met at the restaurant, an unassuming place called "Palermo." Nathan was leaned against the side of his car when Yuri pulled up. "We'll have a private room," Nathan assured him, before leading the way in, smiling beatifically at a stunned-looking young hostess in a black dress, greeting a gentleman wearing a tie with enthusiastic air kisses, and sweeping through the restaurant toward the back. Yuri followed in his wake, receiving a blurred impression of puzzled-looking diners before they entered a room that looked designed for much larger parties. The probable manager handed them both menus and left, and Yuri looked to Nathan for an explanation.

"One of my little investments," Nathan said. "Once the food arrives, they'll leave us in peace — I know where the drink stations are. Unless you'd rather have something stronger?"

"I don't drink," Yuri said. Not entirely true, but once a year was close enough. 

Nathan accepted that without comment. "I hope Italian is all right with you, but this was the only one of my restaurants with a free private room. I don't displace customers, you understand."

"This is... fine." He looked down at the menu. "Do you have any recommendations?"

Of course Nathan had recommendations, too many to really help Yuri narrow the decision down, but it gave them something to talk about. They'd arranged themselves, without discussion, at the corner of a series of four tables pushed together, as if for a family reunion. Once the meals arrived, Yuri felt an overwhelming sense of relief, in hopes that the awkward conversation about work could finally shift to something more natural. 

"I noticed you were trying to create a plausible narrative when we first spoke," Nathan said without preamble.

Good. He'd hoped Nathan would be able to sort out the reasoning behind his call. "Yes. I hope it didn't contradict anything you'd done or said."

"No. I claimed we met for the second time at lunch at the bakery. I actually ate in my car the day it would have been most plausible, but I don't suppose it matters." 

"It might under cross-examination."

Nathan lifted one slender eyebrow; Yuri noticed it was actually pink as well. "Do you have something in mind?"

"I just try to plan for all eventualities. It's the same with my mother's care." He described the nursing home, the trust, the plans he'd made, but Nathan interrupted.

"From what you told me about her, I'm surprised you haven't placed her there already." He waved away Yuri's explanation. "I know, I know, we talked about this once before. I know you have your reasons. I just wonder if it might not do her good, as well."

"Perhaps," Yuri said. He set his fork down; talk of his mother always robbed him of his appetite. "My point was simply that I feel the need to be prepared. You are only the second person I... you are the _first_ person I've allowed close since I became Lunatic." 

"A double life will do that."

"You hardly seem isolated," Yuri replied, perhaps a bit sharply.

"All my closest friends are other heroes. I haven't lived with a man since..." He tapped a nail against his chin, considering. "Since before I bought out Helios. I haven't had a relationship longer than a few months since becoming a hero. Boyfriends want to know why you can't meet them, why you disappear without warning, don't answer your phone..."

"Friends want to know why you smirk silently when they debate Lunatic's views..."

Nathan laughed. "How dare they." Yuri found himself smiling in response. "How's the Justice Department taking this level of activity?"

"With great confusion. The consulting profiler is baffled. There was some hope that we could track his movements, that he might have gone elsewhere, but our inquiries have turned up nothing."

"How much enjoyment do you get out of knowing more than they do?" Nathan asked, his tone neutral.

"Too much," Yuri admitted. "I wish the Hero TV link hadn't placed me on the task force. Some of my colleagues are good people I'd rather not deceive at quite this level, and there's also the risk that I'll change my behavior in response to the investigation in a way that tips someone off. Though I suppose you've prevented that."

"Or so I'd like to believe," Nathan said. 

"It's true," Yuri said, looking down again at the mixture of dead skin and new scars on his hands. Somehow they'd tripped back into that moment from the night before last, Yuri admitting far more than he wanted to without saying very much at all. 

"I know," Nathan said gently. "Even Barnaby pointed that out."

Yuri felt somewhat pleased that the young man wasn't 'Handsome' just at present, and then tried to throttle the feeling, because nothing good lay that direction. "He did?"

"Apparently he and Tiger noticed something off. I ended up admitting to our little grudge matches."

All the more reason, then, to lay the groundwork so thoroughly for their civilian acquaintance. "I see."

"Disrupts your plans?" Nathan asked. That neutral tone again.

"I understand why you don't fully trust me, but you can be more direct about it without offending me, I assure you," Yuri snapped. "No, it does not. All I wanted to make sure that we had as airtight an explanation as possible for our civilian relationship." Poor choice of words, but to adjust it would just draw more attention to it. "I'd prefer that no one know you were hurt because I hadn't hurt you, but it's too late for that now."

"I see." Nathan folded his napkin carefully, returned it to the table. "Yes, there are times when I simply want to see your answer without giving away my reaction. You've invested considerable effort into fooling your colleagues and mine, and I want to know how you feel about that. How likely you are to enjoy keeping information from me as well. Especially if I'm about to embark on a joint deception with you."

"The only reason for any joint deception was to minimize the consequences to _you_ if I were caught." 

"Really," Nathan said softly. "Hmm." He leaned back in his chair. "And you think the odds of that are good?"

Yuri shook his head. "Not going by past patterns. If there's a new hero in the wings, that could change. The roster's been surprisingly stable the past few years."

"After the turnover that brought in the girls and Origami, that's not too surprising." Nathan's gaze flicked down to the table. "Food not to your taste?"

"It was a fairly large portion, for me," Yuri said, not wanting to admit to his loss of appetite. 

"You are fairly thin," Nathan agreed, and Yuri realized that their fights would be the main reason for Nathan to know that. "It makes me want to mother-hen you, make sure you're eating right."

"I'd be happy to give you more opportunities."

Nathan chuckled. "I may take you up on that. But there's no need to call it a night just now. No one's coming to kick us out."

Yuri nodded, but the questioning tone Nathan had taken had soured the evening for him, and he excused himself as soon as he could after the obligatory haggling over who got to claim the check. He let it go to Nathan without much struggle, and walked through the restaurant, now much quieter, to his car.

He understood Nathan's concerns. No one should trust Lunatic unquestioningly, let alone someone who'd been injured by him repeatedly. He couldn't fault anything Nathan had done, but he still disliked the evidence he wasn't trusted, and it was easy enough to sort out why, now that he was alone. He'd trusted Nathan and wanted to be trusted in return. He wanted some sign that all the interest, the trust, the closeness, wasn't entirely on his side. 

As he turned to unlock his car door, he heard the door of the restaurant open, and Nathan stood framed in the doorway. "Oh, good," Nathan said. "I was afraid you'd have left already." Yuri shook his head, and Nathan drew closer, heels tapping on the sidewalk. "Does it make you feel any better that I immediately regretted upsetting you? I don't think my caution's unreasonable, but tact wouldn't be, either."

"You did nothing wrong," Yuri said. "I simply..." The words caught in his throat, because they were all about Nathan's significance to Yuri, and about how badly Yuri wanted to be equally significant to him. Half of them were words he'd barely let himself think. 

"Trust takes time," Nathan said. "You've known me longer than I've known you, so to speak."

"I suppose that's true," Yuri said. No, it definitely was; he'd been able to investigate a great deal of Nathan's life by virtue of knowing both his identities, while Nathan had only known what he'd chosen to divulge as Lunatic. "But most of what I know about you is publicly available. I think you know more of my secrets and my past than I do of yours." 

"Something for the second date," Nathan said lightly. 

It took most of Yuri's willpower not to ask whether Nathan meant it when he referred to this as a date. That would be something for the next occasion, too. "I don't know when I should call you next," he said.

"Whenever your schedule allows," Nathan said. "Believe me, if I'm too busy to meet you or to talk, I'll let you know."

"Understood," Yuri said. He unlocked his car door, got inside, but Nathan leaned down by the window, and Yuri rolled it down.

"I'll stop teasing about dates if you want," Nathan said, his voice low and serious again. 

"I... might prefer to think of them that way," Yuri said. "If you did, that is."

Nathan's lips quirked in a small smile. "I hadn't been, but I certainly can." 

"Then I suppose I will too," Yuri said quietly. Nathan stood up, backing a few steps away from the car, and Yuri turned the key in the ignition, turned on the lights, and only looked up in time to see Nathan blowing a kiss to the car. He felt himself smiling, the first real smile of the night, and he waved as he backed out of the parking space. Nathan turned to go back indoors, and Yuri steered himself away towards home.


	13. Chapter 13

Nathan took the long way home to give himself time to think. He'd had his suspicions, and Yuri had, in a roundabout way, confirmed them. 

_Dates,_ Nathan thought. It had been a long time since he'd done _that._ Not enough time, not enough eligible men... They might as well go for old-fashioned courtship. Yuri could call on him and they'd meet in the parlor. They'd sit on damask chairs and Yuri could call him Miss Seymour. Or no — he wasn't the oldest, so he'd be Miss Nathan, wouldn't he? He didn't think empire-waist gowns would look so good on him, but better Jane Austen than something more Victorian.

It seemed clear enough that this was fairly new territory for Yuri — not just letting someone know about his past and his double life, but relationships at all — and while relationships weren't new to Nathan, he had a feeling this one was going to be. He'd begun the teasing out of habit, because flirting was just how he got to know people, both men and women, but especially men. Men's reactions to flirtation told him a lot about how he'd get along with them. He'd never encountered someone who took it as seriously as Yuri, but he'd also never learned someone's darkest secrets before seeing his face. 

And while he'd been trying to ignore it _since_ seeing that face, the fact was that Judge Petrov had always struck him as a very attractive man. Not Nathan's usual type — too remote, too seemingly humorless — but attractive. Now he knew that Yuri was neither remote nor humorless, though, and Yuri was clearly interested. 

He could let himself think it. Where it could go from there, though — that was where Yuri's planning and coordinating came into play. And that made him almost as uncomfortable as the violence that had started their encounters. Possibly more so.

Violence was part of Nathan's job, and he'd never had a problem keeping it there. He'd never been violent with anyone close to him, and he'd never before been in the position of becoming close to someone _after_ violence had entered the picture. He didn't think he'd have a problem compartmentalizing it, in that way; his anger at Lunatic had faded as their fights had turned into arguments, then discussions, then conversations. 

Yuri, though. Yuri had attacked him on the freeway after months of their encounters, after telling him about killing his father. Before he unmasked, but well after secrets and confessions had become part of their... relationship, he supposed, was the only word. Yuri had described his father abusing his mother. Yuri partook, not of the controlled violence of Hero TV — heroes had been fired in the past for being too aggressive with suspects — but in his own, unrestrained brand of justice, sanitized in his own mind by its higher purpose. He'd demonstrated that he could and did justify violence to himself, that he coud overlook the brutality of it, and that he could turn it against Nathan both calculatedly and in anger. 

And Nathan held Yuri's life in his hands. Did that give him more power, or put him more at risk? 

He knew the proposed deception should be a red flag, but he couldn't think of another solution. It was minor, really, and it was their first mutual civilian encounter worth noting. They might have run into each other at Hero TV events, but Nathan's only damage fine hearing had taken place back before Judge Trang had retired. It was a reasonable enough explanation for them to begin seeing each other socially, or dating. Certainly an easier explanation than the truth.

Honestly, the idea just bothered Nathan because he wasn't used to hiding anything about his life except for the fact that he was a hero. If people made assumptions about him based on his personal style, his social position, the color of his skin, or the fact he was a NEXT, that was on them. He might be angry, he might laugh it off, but he never did anything to fool anyone he met. It was all there if they wanted to look. Until now. The fact that Yuri kept so many secrets, and seemed to enjoy some of them, was almost as alien to Nathan as the fact that Yuri had taken up the Lunatic mantle in the first place. 

How many people _had_ Yuri killed? Two more, at least, than the official tally for Lunatic. Dozens. Nathan couldn't remember the full list. Between twenty and thirty. Shouldn't he weigh that more heavily than attraction, or danger to himself, or whether or not Yuri felt bad about that or anything else?

At home, though, he checked the number — thirty-four, in fact, more than he'd realized — and then he began searching the newspaper archives for their names. Just what he'd once resolved not to do. "Go to _bed,_ Nathan," he told himself aloud, but first he had to save the stories he'd pulled up.

 

Yuri had driven home, analyzing the strange, buoyant sensation that filled him. It wasn't quite as simple as happiness, but it was certainly purer than the satisfaction he tended to feel after a successful maneuver as Lunatic or the satisfactory conclusion of a court case. It was related to those, though; the feeling that something had gone well, had concluded as it should. 

He was confident that, if Nathan agreed to it, they could present their relationship to others in a way that wouldn't raise any significant questions. The apparent mismatch between them should excite more comment than any doubts about the nature of their meeting, and the explanations either of them could offer would really be fairly close to the truth - once they'd begun to talk, they'd realized how much common ground they truly shared. 

_Dating._ It felt incongruous, applied to their situation, but it was also a necessary step, he suspected. They might have gotten to know each other through discussions of deeply-held values, the stuff of serious relationships, but they'd had very few conversations about trivialities; how they each spent their free time, tastes in food, in books, in music and movies. Whether Nathan was the type of person who could even understand introverts. He knew almost nothing about Nathan's family, his life prior to becoming a hero, even if he'd known the publicly available facts about Fire Emblem, and about Nathan Seymour, the wunderkind behind Helios. Nathan knew only the worst and most secret things about Yuri's life. 

That wasn't quite true. They'd had that one night's conversation, talking easily, laughing at each other's jokes. Surely that indicated some essential compatibility, whatever else they might learn about each other. 

Maybe that would be enough. Maybe Nathan wouldn't think better of that easy but conditional agreement. Maybe Nathan would feel, as he did, that their encounters in their other identities were distinct from the way they'd come to know each other as people. He hoped so. He hoped Nathan would understand that he would never, ever be violent towards him, not in their private lives.

He hoped he could never be violent against Nathan. 

Best not to even think about it. The possibility was too absurd. He wasn't his father. His father had meant well, but he sold the idea of justice to an evil man and the corporation he represented. His father had consented to a masquerade, had sold off all of his ideals piecemeal until all that was left was his willingness to hurt others. Yuri's ideals might have shifted, have undergone adjustments, but he had never abandoned them, and he had never hurt anyone except in defense of his idea of justice. That knowledge might be more of a comfort if he weren't falling in love with one of the people he'd hurt.

He understood Nathan's concerns about making contact with him, making plans — the concern that Yuri could become a hostage to the secret they shared — but he also wished Nathan would make the first move, so Yuri didn't feel quite so much that he was pursuing a man he'd damaged. 

In the end, though, his need to see Nathan overcame his scruples, and he made the call. 

 

It was nothing much. A call, an invitation to lunch, regret that Nathan was busy that day. "Some other time?" Nathan suggested, and Yuri brightened visibly. They both consulted planners, picked a tentative date. That was all.

So why did he keep _smiling?_

It was a stupid question to ask himself. Of course he knew why. He knew exactly why. But why pick _Yuri,_ of all people, a man who was the very definition of bad news even if you discounted the "murderous vigilante" thing? He was successful, yes, and attractive. Reasonably fit, if a bit too thin, based on Nathan's memory of grappling with him, and he looked nice in a suit. But his personal history - even if you didn't know about the history of abuse, the massive, apparently-untreated trauma, there was still the fact that he apparently hadn't been in a significant relationship with another man in over a decade; Nathan had in the past dismissed men significantly hotter than Yuri on the grounds that he didn't house-break anybody. 

Yet here he was, looking forward to eating lunch with Lunatic. 

With Yuri. Because just as he'd half expected, the sight of Yuri was enough to disrupt, or displace, his thoughts about that list of victims, about the burn scars on his leg, still an angry red, about deceit and what that meant. Yuri smiled in greeting, Nathan seated himself, and they were talking about their days, about the restaurant, just like any two people might do. They joked about their dependence on assistants - "Mine could poison me with restaurant recommendations," Nathan said - and shared tastes of their meals. It felt so normal, so comfortable. 

He'd been reading up on Lunatic's victims, here and there. Most of them as loathsome as any death penalty proponent could wish for, and hard to mourn. Twenty-three in that church alone; the traitorous part of his mind that kept trying to explain and excuse Yuri's actions as Lunatic, differentiate between Yuri and his murderous alter-ego, supplied the fact that the people in the church had fired on heroes trying to rescue them. Yuri had set the church alight and not attacked individuals. 

Eleven others as part of Lunatic's official tally. Two more that only Nathan and Yuri knew of. Did he want to go looking through the news of the sixties for unexplained burning deaths and the name Petrov? But he trusted Yuri on that count. He'd killed his father to protect his mother. Nothing that Yuri had told Nathan had ever borne obvious signs of whitewash, in fact. He supposed it was possible that the whole story was false — the abusive father, the mother's slide into dementia, the heroic defense of his mother as the beginning of his career as a killer — but somehow, he couldn't bring himself to doubt Yuri to that extent. Surely a sociopath and compulsive liar wouldn't be so guarded and reluctant, would he? 

And if he was, there was nothing Nathan could do about it, was there? 

 

Their meetings during the day became something of a routine. Nathan would order some frothy coffee concoction, Yuri would order ordinary black tea, and they'd talk. Yuri learned that Nathan was, as he put it, "the youngest of three daughters," that he'd been raised by his mother and grandmother. "And Mama's girlfriend Cassandra," Nathan had added. "While we were kids, we figured she was just her girlfriend, you know? And then I go to college and when I come back for Thanksgiving I find out she's her _girlfriend._ "

"Jarring?" Yuri asked.

"Kinda! Even for me. I don't know if they were keeping it secret or if it was a late in life realization. For some reason I never asked." He scooped foam from his cup with the little wooden stirring stick. "Maybe one of my sisters did."

The sisters were named Vanessa and Andrea. Vanessa, the oldest, had children of her own, she was busy, she and Nathan had never been terribly close - she was seven years older, Nathan said. Yuri nodded like he had any idea what sibling relationships were like. Mostly, he let Nathan talk. Nathan owned multiple small businesses in addition to his controlling interest in Helios, and every so often one of them would come up in conversation and Yuri would learn something new. Nathan's first investment had been in a boutique. He loved to cook, but didn't enjoy baking as much, which was why he owned more than one bakery — "I get the good stuff without all the effort" — and he missed taking a more personal hand in the running of the smaller establishments. He missed reading. He'd picked out his hero emblem when he was still in high school, and gotten it tattooed on his arm for his eighteenth birthday. Yuri, who'd never even considered tattoos, was fascinated.

"How much did it hurt?"

"Not much, really," Nathan said. "Cat scratches are worse."

"If you say so. I have a problem with needles."

"Really?" 

Yuri was a bit surprised by Nathan's interest at such a minor detail, though he explained — no fainting, just a bit of a phobic reaction, he couldn't watch when he had blood drawn — and the next time they met, he finally asked about it.

"I feel like I'm the one doing all the talking," Nathan said. "Mind you, I love to talk, and you're a good listener..."

"So I've been told," Yuri said. "I just assumed it was because I don't speak much."

"No, it's more than that. You seem... interested."

"I _am_ interested," Yuri said. "In you."

Nathan smiled at him, and Yuri warmed himself at the sight for a moment before he looked down at his tea. "Still, tell me more about yourself," Nathan said. "I'm interested too."

It was hard to think of what to tell. He didn't want to say any more about his family. His life had been, for the past few years, centered on two things; caring for his mother, and planning and carrying out Lunatic's activities. With the latter out of the picture, he often found himself at loose ends in the evenings, going over work he'd brought home a second or third time just for something to do. He had a hard time bringing himself to admit that.

"What did you do before?" Nathan asked. "I know law school is time-consuming, but surely you listened to music while you studied, took breaks so your brain wouldn't melt, something?"

"I used to read," Yuri said. "Mystery novels, and true-crime books... I'm afraid this is very predictable." 

"The procedural mistakes didn't bother you? Or the lack of realism?"

"In the fiction, it was more about mindless entertainment than anything — and part of the appeal is that in most mysteries, justice is done in some fashion, procedural errors or faulty research aside. In the non-fiction it's much the same — you want to know who may be at fault, how the justice system caught them or failed to do so. There's some distance, I suppose, almost like reading fiction..." He thought about it. "I never really enjoyed the books about unsolved mysteries, it's true. And I hated books about miscarriage of justice."

"You really were kind of destined for it, weren't you?"

Yuri nodded. "My father was always very concerned about justice. I'm sure I would have worked in the justice system in one respect or another no matter what." If his father hadn't become corrupt, if his powers had manifested some other way, he might well have been a hero — but his father's identity was one secret Yuri was still keeping to himself. 

He'd only seen his father once in recent memory, a silent, frowning specter watching him after he'd killed the young man and injured Nathan for the last time. Yuri would glimpse him out of the corner of his eye, find him watching from a corner as he sat, silent and angry with himself, but the ghost of Stern Bild's first hero had nothing to say to his wayward son anymore. And Yuri had nothing to say about him. Not even his mother knew what Yuri saw. He never told her that he knew her dinner conversations were delusions because he saw his father too. Were his own visions delusions? He'd considered the idea before, but there was no answer to be had in this life. Whether his father was a ghost or just the projection of grief and conscience, his appearances and absences were beyond Yuri's control, and certainly unconnected to his conscious mind. It only made sense to think of the specter of Mr. Legend as an independent being. Did he approve of Yuri's changed perspective, his relationship with a hero, and feel his son needed less correction than previously? Did that mean Yuri should change his path, since his father had been wrong about so much in life? 

But he wouldn't. Not if it meant distance from Nathan.


	14. Chapter 14

It hadn't been that long since the end of their showdowns and the end of Nathan's visits to the site, but there were already signs of change at the old Helios plant. The door he'd always used to get in unlocked readily, and opened without the usual protesting of rusted hinges; some maintenance worker or security guard had taken an interest. An inner door, though, was wrapped with chains and a padlock. He could melt it, or he could give up and scramble in via one of the freight entrances or coal chutes or whatever other means of ingress the urb-ex kids used; he'd been looking at photos online earlier that day. 

Or he could take the hint from fate and drop it right here. He could go anywhere in the city to brood over the feelings he was having about Lunatic and the man behind him; he didn't need to do it _here._

He didn't need to, but he wanted to, and the chains weren't that heavy-duty or expensive. The padlock softened up like a pat of butter and gave way with only a bit of twisting and pulling on the chains; unwinding them was tedious but better than just melting the door's latch directly. 

The plant was like it had always been; dark, reeking of wet and decay and a whiff of fresh marijuana. For once he wouldn't have the plant to himself, then. Good thing he'd come in costume already, though frightening a group of miscreants with some weed was more Sky High's department than his. 

If he could even find them. He'd only known the path up to the roof, catwalks and walkways skirting the turbine hall to reach a sort of control panel or switchboard, and through that to the roof. There were offices, though, locker rooms, and the whole cavernous turbine room — mostly empty but still housing some rusted machinery — where a group of young trespassers could be lurking.

And more power to them, though it'd be nice if they'd share their weed. If he stumbled on them on his way to the roof, at least he wouldn't be surprised. 

The path was familiar by now. He knew the rickety patches, he remembered the rusty spot beneath a roof leak that had bowed alarmingly under his weight the last time — there was a hole there now, but the catwalk itself held — and he knew which steps to skip and where he could and couldn't risk the handrails. They really ought to seal some of this off. It was a lawsuit waiting to happen, even without his own break-ins making trespassing easier. Seal it off, or renovate it. Never mind lawsuits; he'd feel responsible if someone was hurt here, knowing how easy it was to get in and how little they were doing to prevent it. The sign was a landmark, at least unofficially, but they could make something useful of the plant and keep the sign in place. 

When he turned the corner into the control room, he realized he'd been hearing the quiet hissing for a while now — because it was coming from a spray-paint can being wielded by an androgynous young individual in baggy, ratty jeans and a loose tee-shirt, both of which had probably endured many previous rounds of graffiti. Nathan stopped dead; the kid dropped the can, which clattered deafeningly in the silence between them. 

"So," Nathan said, and then cleared his throat. "Come here often?"

Without a word, the kid sprinted across the room, took hold of a guardrail with both hands, and smoothly vaulted over it. "Wait!" Nathan shouted, too late already, but when he ran over to the spot where the kid had disappeared, he saw them floating downward like a dandelion seed, shirt billowed out around their skinny torso. "I wasn't going to arrest you," he called down after the kid.

"You can never be too sure!" The voice was androgynous too. 

At least that was one visitor who wasn't likely to get hurt in here. "Have a safe landing!" he called back, and turned back toward the control panel. 

The visiting artist had left behind a bust of Sky High in silver, gold and purple — nice, if cartoonish — and a half-finished caricature of Barnaby in his hero suit with two fingers in that little salute he liked to do. Not bad, but Nathan couldn't help feeling a bit miffed that he wasn't one of the subjects, here in the Helios plant.

Beyond the control room, it was just a short flight of stairs up to the rooftop. He wasn't sure, but he suspected the reason for the roof access was employee smoke breaks; the plant had been built in a more nicotine-stained time. The door was still off its hinges and still dented from his kick back when he first came up here, but someone had replaced it overlapping the door, maybe just to keep weather out of the stairwell. 

Yuri Petrov. The two of them made sense together, that was the worst of it. They had logical reasons to meet, even if their involvement was a little questionable given Yuri's jurisdiction. They were similar in education, background, and age, which was more than Nathan could say for most guys he'd pick up in a bar. And if Nathan had any common sense at all he'd run screaming from him. 

He could almost wish he didn't know. If Judge Yuri Petrov had approached him without giving him so much as a hint, he could have kept fighting Lunatic, and started dating Yuri, and never realized. That would only have required Yuri to be a monster, after all, or a different kind of monster than he was. 

It wasn't just the violence. It wasn't just any one kind of violence; Yuri could be planning to murder him as Lunatic, or Yuri could hit him the way Yuri's father had beaten his mother, and Yuri might not even realize he was capable of that until it happened. But neither of those was even the root of what bothered him.

And it wasn't just that he'd begun to see some reason in Yuri's arguments in favor of Lunatic. Anyone was bound to know of one or two people they were sure shouldn't be walking free, or walking at all; know of them by reputation or know them personally. Most people would never do anything about it; because the law said not to, because your own feelings weren't proof of what was right, because you didn't have the power to do so. Most people would never even come face to face with someone else who was doing something about it. But Nathan had never been like most people.

Now he'd learned things about himself — that he was willing to let a murderer walk, that he was willing to value justice over law, that he was willing to decide what justice meant despite his insistence that no one person should. Was he in too deep, now, to go to the police? And what would it accomplish if he did? 

The marks of their dispute were all over this roof: scorched marks on the bricks and the back of the Helios sign, burned patches of tar paper underfoot. He wouldn't be surprised by a scrap of burned Lunatic cape. But the marks were surprisingly small, for all the pain he remembered and all the passion that had gone into them. Whoever had wrestled the door into place would have no way of guessing what had caused them, if they'd even noticed the marks. It could have been trespassers setting off fireworks, or some kind of bonfire, or an arson attempt.

Thirty-four people. Yuri was dangerous. It was hard to remember that; hard to think of Yuri as a killer in a gaudy outfit, moving like a puppet with tangled strings, instead of as the lunch companion with the dry, peculiar wit and the over-sweetened tea. Yuri was dangerous, and yet he probably wasn't faking everything, or anything. Nathan had been the one to call Lunatic out in the first place. He'd chosen not to arrest Yuri, that night he'd unmasked or the next day. He'd started the flirtation, and escalated it, and much as he might be second-guessing himself now, he'd made the first move every step of the way. He didn't think Yuri had been subtly manipulating him all this time — but then, if he'd noticed it wouldn't have been very subtle. 

The night sky and the rooftop didn't give him much by way of clarity. After a moment's hesitation — there was always the risk the dandelion-seed grafittist would head skyward again — he lifted his cowl up and over his head, feeling the coolness of fresh air against his face. 

It wasn't the danger that scared him, or Yuri's potential for violence. It was the fear that he was making a mistake; that he was misjudging the situation, reading Yuri and his intentions all wrong, perpetrating an injustice. 

But the only way to know, to see how it all turned out, was to wait. To keep in touch with Yuri, watch him, learn about him. To see whether Yuri could leave Lunatic behind. And see what he'd do, himself, if Yuri couldn't.

He wasn't sure if it was simply the feeling of reaching a decision, or the content of the decision, that felt like relief. 

 

Reaching a decision changed nothing, of course; Yuri was still a closed book, though there wasn't anything unduly sinister about that. He was obviously self-contained, as Nathan had intuited from their first civilian meeting, and as Yuri freely admitted. Nathan didn't even know what Yuri's mysterious father had done for a living, but he didn't think that was the best place to commence with questions. He wasn't sure there was a good place to commence with questions. This wasn't an employment interview, after all. He tried varying their plans — taking Yuri to bars, to the symphony one weekend, going shopping, spending time in a park — and just observed.

Yuri used his hair. He hid behind it when he didn't want his expressions scrutinized -- at emotional moments, Nathan had found, but no doubt it was useful when discussing Lunatic with his colleagues, too. He flipped it back from his face when he was relaxed or being friendly, or in a more serious context, he tended to tuck the loose locks behind his ear whenever they escaped. If he was lost in thought he sometimes twisted a lock around his finger, or untied and redid his ponytail. He never removed the hair clips in his fidgeting, though. Nathan found it fascinating to watch, and sometimes he really wanted just to touch Yuri's hair, run his fingers through it, but he was still being cautious. In a different direction, now; it was clear enough that Yuri was developing real feelings for him, and Nathan didn't want to lead him on. Yuri might be a murderer, but he was also obviously very isolated and probably very lonely.

Partly by choice, of course. Yuri did not suffer fools gladly, and he defined foolishness to include many types of entertainment; he hated televised sports, and refused to join Nathan in watching them, not even for the noble goal of watching men in various stages of undress or tight clothing. He was willing to give many things a try for Nathan's sake, but he couldn't force himself to enjoy them, and Nathan was learning how to tell when he wasn't. Yuri disliked noisy bars, but seemed happy enough to spend time with Nathan in a quiet little establishment Antonio had introduced Nathan to, then abandoned as too dull. He'd sip water, or tea, and they'd talk, but that was no different than their meetings in cafes, and going to a bar for that purpose seemed unnecessary. Nathan could make himself a drink at home.

But it was at a bar that Nathan discovered one of the things Yuri had never bothered to mention. He'd excused himself to go to the little girls' room — Yuri never batted an eyelash at any of Nathan's gender excursions — and when he returned, he found Yuri doodling something on a cocktail napkin. It looked like Nathan's tattoo, the literal fire emblem, but Yuri covered it up hastily when Nathan arrived.

"Miss me?" Nathan asked, and Yuri ducked his head again, clearly taking the question as a reference to the drawing rather than the flirtatious silliness Nathan had meant.

"I used to draw all the time. Abstract patterns are easier for me now than representative..." He trailed off, like he wasn't sure why he'd started on the subject. Nathan waited a moment to see if he'd say more, but Yuri just tucked his pen in the pocket of his jacket.

"May I take a look?" Nathan asked. Yuri passed him the napkin. "Did you ever take classes?" he asked. The emblem was a good likeness, but he'd seen that at a glance; he was more interested in Yuri's reaction to being discovered. It was a trivial enough discovery, but Yuri didn't think of many things as trivial, Nathan had learned.

"All through high school, but after Papa... you know the story. I took a few afterwards, as an undergraduate, but..."

"You gave it up then?"

"It was more like I lost interest. Or I suppose you could say I lost my passion for it."

"It's a shame," Nathan said. "It seems like you have some talent." That was a guess, as Nathan couldn't really judge from this, but if Yuri was talking about losing passion for something, he must have had it once. And Yuri tended to focus very strongly on whatever he was passionate about, as Nathan was learning firsthand.

Yuri shook his head. "A lot of people doodle in the margins of things when they're bored. This is no different."

But the next time they went window-shopping together, Yuri lingered for a few seconds in front of an art-supply store. Nathan smiled to himself. Best not to push, he thought. But if Yuri had once had a creative outlet and then had done without it for many years, developing one again could only do him good. And so could having something to occupy his time beyond talking to his plants and caring for his aging mother and keeping himself in top shape for setting criminals on fire. Nathan could at least hope he'd planted a seed.

 

Yuri deliberated for all of two days before he bought a sketchpad. Any further materials could wait until he was certain this hobby would last; until he'd seen if he retained what he'd once learned. He used it at home, sketching objects in his bedroom, or in the Lunatic lair. He'd largely moved out of it, but it was in the basement, inaccessible to his mother, and it was a good place to retreat for privacy. He'd used it that way long before he ever considered his secret identity. He sketched the extra masks that he'd had made long ago; he'd known when he started that he'd never be able to order more. He'd selected a company overseas, one of many that supplied costumes for aspiring or freelance heroes, but he'd had every intention of making such an impact as Lunatic that he might be recognizable internationally. He'd taken care to have the costumes shipped to a secondary location, to a shipping address he'd reserved under a false identity.

All that caution, only to retire without fanfare and with three quarters of the cloaks and even more of the masks unused. It almost seemed like a waste.

Not that he would have continued operating as Lunatic simply to use up his costumes. If he'd begun to doubt his convictions on his own, he was fairly certain he would have discontinued his activities. He could always have continued his crusade and forced Nathan's hand; it would have ended in his apprehension, no doubt, but he would have upheld his principles to the end. The truth was that Nathan had led him to doubt. He still felt certain that the most brutal murderers, those who preyed on the helpless, deserved to pay with their lives. But perhaps not as severely as his justice would have it, and perhaps the decision was not his to make.

And perhaps he was as brutal a murderer as any of those he'd executed. Did motives matter? Did the crimes of his victims really matter? Nathan at one point had insisted they didn't.

Not all of his victims had been equally deserving, of course. The guards protecting Maverick, for instance. The man had confessed on camera. He'd committed and commissioned individual murders, terrorist bombings, untold loss of life, property and economic damage, and he had perverted Stern Bild's justice system beyond repair. Anyone who would defend the man's life deserved to forfeit their own, and a few of the guards had lowered their weapons at the sight of him. But those who hadn't had just been doing their jobs. The young man he'd killed on his last, failed appearance as Lunatic had been no worse than Wild Tiger had been in his youth, according to Nathan.

He felt he was on firmer ground with the killers. Maverick himself, of course; for what he'd done to the city he deserved to experience the same death dozens of times over. The first three men he'd killed had been implicated but never charged in a case in which a child was kidnapped, held for ransom, and then murdered along with his parents; the terrorist he'd killed the next night had a gun to Agnes Joubert's head, though he'd killed the man in part because he thought he'd been seen changing out of his Lunatic garb.

Although Wild Tiger had never confirmed it, there'd been reports that Benoit Depardieu had an altercation with the hero prior to his encounter with Lunatic. They'd had the testimony of an admittedly very confused and frightened escaped victim, and two eyewitnesses who had, revealingly, seen the man smash a window in taking the potential victim to safety, not to mention the background noise on a call made to Wild Tiger by Joubert. If so, the killer had gone directly from an encounter with a hero to seek another woman to torture, violate and murder, and Yuri had saved his next victim's life. Raul Vieira had crushed a young man's skull with a fire extinguisher and been convicted merely of voluntary manslaughter thanks to a gay panic defense; Jennifer Takahashi had confessed to killing six hospitalized children under her care but was speculated to have killed dozens more; Vincent and Steven Milton had attempted to burglarize a home and then, finding it occupied, had shot, stabbed, and strangled the six people they found within, ranging in age from a seven-year-old to a woman in her seventies before setting the house on fire.

Some had been serving life sentences, or sentences of centuries at a time. Vieira had been released after serving his sentence, Depardieu never arrested. None were going to forfeit their lives to the law, and none had suffered any less pain at Yuri's hands than they'd inflicted on their victims. But those he'd killed in the church, when he'd disrupted the heroes' live raid, had been a mixed bag; all criminals, some violent, but not all of them. Only about half were implicated in deaths, and at least a few of those had been accessories, getaway drivers and the like. He hadn't intended for all of them to die, but he hadn't really meant not to kill them, either. He would have fired at Barnaby Brooks if not for Wild Tiger's intervention, and he _had_ fired at Origami Cyclone. He didn't wish to kill any heroes, either, but he hadn't had much objection to killing them if they opposed him.

He'd been in the wrong, even by his own standards, altogether too frequently. And he was a killer as well. What could he do to pay for those errors? Should he simply trust Nathan's judgment? Nathan seemed to feel that there was something worthwhile about him, something worth his time and attention. Yuri didn't feel that murderers deserved to live, let alone be happy, although he excluded himself from the category of murderer. Nathan did consider him a murderer, yet spent time with him voluntarily, and Nathan was far too perceptive not to realize what that meant to Yuri.

The question, of course, was what it meant to Nathan, and yet Yuri resisted the thought of asking. Surely this couldn't last; any alteration in the equilibrium they'd achieved would destroy it. But he couldn't bring himself to disturb this fragile and temporary peace. If this was all he could have, this was enough.


	15. Chapter 15

This wasn't normally how Nathan approached relationships — slowly, cautiously, and if not quite dispassionately, at least with a measure of detachment. Maybe not enough detachment, in this case — he'd let Yuri, the person, overwrite Lunatic in his mind — but far more than he normally had. Spring was turning into summer, and yet the greatest extent of their physical contact, still, was sitting side by side, watching a movie, his arm stretched out along the back of the couch but never descending to Yuri's shoulder.

The avoidance of touch ensured it was always on his mind, and the caution meant he was fully aware of all the reasons it could be a terrible idea. The two of them were bound by the Lunatic secret until one of them was dead, and that made a breakup a nightmarish prospect for reasons far beyond the usual, ordinary misery. Some of the possible outcomes seemed unthinkable now, but then, so did a breakup, when they weren't yet in a relationship. Embarking on a romance knowing that, in some way, it would be permanent — it was almost like an arranged marriage. Or, he supposed, like having a child with someone. He didn't know why he hadn't seen it the night Yuri took off his mask. He wondered if Yuri had seen it. Probably. If not then, at least soon after.

He wondered how long the paralysis would last, never making a move because then there'd be no turning back. He felt like he was waiting for some sign, something to tip him one direction or the other.

When it came, of course, he recognized it instantly.

It was an announcement on Hero TV, on the big Medaille screen, about a hostage situation at the courthouse. He tore back to his car, his lunch meeting forgotten, the call to Agnes ringing before he'd gotten the car into gear. "Why wasn't there an alert?" he demanded.

"Because we're trying to establish if Tiger and Barnaby are on the scene," Agnes said. "Tiger had a hearing scheduled today, but they haven't yet answered. Excuse me." She put him on hold, incensing him just enough that he could notice the sensation, despite feeling like his bones had turned to ice water. Well, he'd wanted a sign. He just hadn't wanted anything that would put Yuri in any danger. A rainbow would have sufficed. As he wove through traffic, he mustered the presence of mind to call Veronica to ask her to reschedule his meeting, but not enough to remember to ask her to dispatch his transport. He had to call back for that.

It wasn't there when he reached the courthouse, which was just as well, because there was a distinct lack of tension to the crowd of cameras and spectators he saw as he drew closer. And there were camera crews on the ground. Agnes wouldn't send a crew into a dangerous situation under most circumstances. Most.

The crowd made a semicircle around a point that he strongly suspected consisted of Tiger and Barnaby. He scanned the crowd, and his eyes lit on Yuri, at the periphery. He was on the courthouse steps, still in his judicial robes, high enough that Nathan could spot him and he could see Nathan, the moment of recognition visible on his face. As Nathan headed his way, he began edging away from the press of people, and he'd broken free by the time Nathan reached the steps. Nathan swept him into a hug, pulling him off the low stone step he was standing on, and garnering a low, surprised sound from Yuri.

"I wasn't expecting to see you here," Yuri said.

"Were you in any danger? Was he anywhere near you?" Yuri's shoulders were wider than Nathan had thought, the arms wrapped around him lean, solid muscle. He felt warm and real and nowhere near close enough to bulletproof.

"I don't believe I was in any danger," Yuri said, his voice muffled by Nathan's shoulder. Nathan noted the evasiveness, but let it go; they stayed that way for some time, not speaking. Eventually, though, Yuri lifted his head to ask, "Surely this wasn't... official? There was no time for it to merit an episode."

"No." This close, he could see the redness of the scar beneath the particles of makeup, the dark circles under Yuri's eyes that he always tried to mask. His hair was slightly mussed, falling out of its clips. "Agnes was hopeful that the dynamic duo were handy."

"They were." Yuri chuckled. "The man stole a gun from a bailiff, took a passerby hostage, and burst into my courtroom. Where I was conducting Wild Tiger's damage fine hearing, and Barnaby was attending as a spectator."

Nathan loosened his grip on Yuri a degree, picturing it, his tension crumbling into a laugh. "I can just imagine his _face..._ "

"It was priceless," Yuri agreed. "I almost felt sorry for him. A pity there were no cameras handy."

"But he was in the room with you?"

"I'm fairly certain he never even registered my presence," Yuri said. "He was a bit distracted by the two powered-up heroes charging at him. Nathan, it's over now. I'm safe."

"I want to know how worried I should be retroactively," Nathan persisted, but he let it drop when Yuri shook his head. He left his arms loosely around Yuri, unwilling to stop touching him just yet, but Yuri reached up to his left temple, feeling around the hair clips. "Here, let me help," Nathan said. "Sorry about that."

"I have no complaints," Yuri said, and then they were interrupted by a yelp.

Tiger had, apparently, tripped up the steps. Most of the crowd had dispersed by that time; a handful seemed to be lingering in Barnaby's orbit, getting autographs and taking photos. "Tiger, what...?" Nathan didn't even know where to start.

"Well, see, I wanted to ask the judge a question, but I didn't want to _interrupt..._ " He seemed to be trying to pull off some 'you sly dog' wink without actually winking, there. "So I tried to wander off all casual while I waited, and I tripped."

Nathan giggled, feeling a bit giddy. "Ask away. I can leave if it's confidential."

"Just kind of hoping the whole saving-your-life deal might get me a break on my fine?"

"No," Yuri said. "Though now that you mention it, this could be a conflict of interest in future cases. I may need to recuse myself."

"Um, is that kind of a personal, uh..."

Nathan actually felt Yuri sigh. "He means having someone else hear your cases, Tiger. And honestly! You have one minute of power and you're wasting it on property damage? Why were you even in court?"

"I didn't damage anything with my powers!"

"Of course not," Nathan said. He removed Yuri's hair clips, combing the hair back into place with his fingernails. Yuri's hair was fine, though not especially soft or silky; just... hair. Yuri's hair.

"It's true," Barnaby confirmed, approaching them. He cast a slightly questioning glance at Nathan, or perhaps specifically at the fact Nathan had his hands in Yuri's hair, but seemed willing to leave it at that for now. "He crashed through a window in his suit. During a rainstorm. The window happened to open onto an office full of computers..."

"Oh no," Nathan said. "Tiger..."

"I really can't comment further," Yuri said. Nathan slid the first of the clips into place. "Nathan, did you interrupt anything to come here?"

"Nothing I can't handle."

"Then can I suggest lunch?" Nathan hoped his startlement hadn't showed. "Since I doubt I can ethically preside over cases involving anyone present, at this point..." And for a while before that, Nathan thought. Still, socializing? With the pair of heroes closest to Lunatic's identity? Was it carelessness or did he actually get off on near-misses?

He probably did. Hopefully not literally.

"I'm afraid we have to be going," Barnaby said. "Some other time, I hope."

"But I'm hungry," Tiger protested.

"We'll get something on the way," Barnaby said, and Tiger followed his partner, grumbling audibly about having plenty of time for fans. Nathan finally exhaled when they were out of earshot.

"Yuri..."

"I apologize," Yuri said. "It seemed like the natural thing to do at the time. And I _am_ hungry."

"I don't mind lunch," Nathan said. "I don't even mind lunch with all four of us, if it's not a complete surprise. But I also think we need to talk privately, and soon."

Yuri pulled away, studying his face. "You're right," he said. "My schedule is cleared for the afternoon, for obvious reasons. Where would you like to go first?"

Nathan had just remembered something, and sure enough, there was the Helios transport, idling within view of the courthouse. "First I need to send my crew back," he said.

 

* * *

 

Yuri followed Nathan to his car, but when Nathan came to a stop at the rear bumper, Yuri did as well. Nathan reached out for him, and Yuri moved into his arms, content with another embrace. This time, though, Nathan touched his jaw, and Yuri's face turned towards Nathan's automatically. Nathan's eyes flicked from Yuri's eyes to his lips, and Yuri closed his own eyes. The kiss was soft and tender and far too short; Yuri kissed him again, his fingers curling around the back of Nathan's neck. He was so happy he felt like laughing, if that wouldn't have required that he stop kissing Nathan. Just when he'd decided not to allow himself to hope any longer, this, out of the blue.

Nathan pulled back, eventually, and Yuri opened his eyes. Nathan was still so close, close enough that Yuri could see the glimmering sweep of his eyeshadow, the slight smear of his lipstick, a single stray eyebrow hair trying to grow back. His eyes really were pink; it might be contacts, but it wasn't a trick of the light. Nathan ran a thumb over Yuri's lower lip. "I don't think my lipstick is your color," he said, with a slight chuckle. Yuri reached up to take his hand, holding it between both of his own, and Nathan's free hand tucked a lock of hair gently behind Yuri's ear. "We should get in the car," Nathan said, and Yuri nodded, despite his reluctance to let go.

"You wanted to talk?" Yuri said.

"I wanted to... forgive me, this is harsh, but honey, the next time you want to play 'I know something you don't know' with me in attendance, warn me in private first?"

Yuri nodded silently. He'd spoken on impulse, forgetting Nathan didn't have his long experience with Lunatic's secret, and although he didn't like to show it, he'd been slightly shaken by the incident in the courtroom; he'd been in more immediate danger in confrontations with the heroes, but he'd sought out all of those encounters. He wasn't accustomed to violence in this setting, and it might have affected his judgment. "I will," he added after a moment, since Nathan hadn't responded.

"Thank you," Nathan said, polite as ever, and Yuri watched as he maneuvered the car out of the parking space. "That wasn't what I wanted to discuss with you, though," Nathan said. "What I'd really had in mind was... you do realize we may never be able to break up?" Before Yuri could speak, he'd held up a hand for silence. "I know," he said. "Right now I can't imagine it either. But that's... you know the least cynical take on what a pre-nup's for, right? The idea is that you agree when you love each other not to behave differently if you later don't."

That was an oddly personal take on a legal arrangement that Yuri had always thought of in terms of protecting assets. "Have you been married?" he asked. Same-sex marriage hadn't been legal in Stern Bild for terribly long — not quite six years.

"Of course not! But in the circles I move in, I hear quite a bit about them. Bridal showers, talk at parties... That's not the point."

"I understand what you mean," Yuri said. "But we can't possibly create any legally binding arrangement regarding my secret. Any oral agreement..." He shook his head. "It wouldn't just be unenforceable, it would be illegal. I'm willing to consider myself on borrowed time. If our relationship were to end, it would be no different than if you'd arrested me the night I revealed my identity."

"That's—" Nathan broke off. For a moment, they heard only the sound of tires on the road, until Nathan said, "It crossed my mind that night that you might kill me."

Yuri swallowed. "It _crossed_ my mind, too, and I knew the moment I had the thought that I couldn't do it."

"You don't think different circumstances might change your mind?" Yuri shook his head, but Nathan persisted. "If I lied to you? Cheated you financially? Cheated on you?"

"But you wouldn't," Yuri said. He had a hard time imagining any dishonesty from Nathan, in business or private life. Infidelity was harder to think of, more painful... more possible, somehow, but when he looked at Nathan, he still couldn't believe it.

"I don't intend to," Nathan said. "But I'm trying for a reaction. Surely you've at least talked to people in family law, even if you're not dealing with divorces yourself."

"I've seen a marriage disintegrate," Yuri said. "I don't want to believe I'm capable of being like... either of them." Nathan didn't respond. "I have... I've considered some form of treatment, classes... I don't know where to begin." He dared to look at Nathan's face again, and finally saw a smile, a hand reaching for his. He grabbed Nathan's hand, lacing their fingers together.

"I'm glad you said that," Nathan said. "It wasn't really what I meant, but I'm glad."

"What did you mean?" Yuri tried not to feel embarrassed, affronted; this had worried him for months.

"It's not so much that I'm afraid you'll kill me. But if we ever reach a point where one of us wants out, I don't want you to stay because you're afraid I'll tell the Justice Department, or—"

"I'd prefer to go to prison than have you stay with me if you didn't want to." He didn't look up from their joined hands, but from the rustle, he suspected Nathan was looking at him, or at least had glanced his way. "I mean that," he said. "It would be wrong for you to... to undergo any hardship on my account."

Nathan squeezed his hand, but didn't speak, and after a time, they pulled to a stop, much sooner than Yuri had expected. He looked up to find Nathan watching him consideringly. "Let's hope it doesn't come to that," Nathan said. "We're here, by the way."

"Here?" Yuri looked around. It was a pleasant, polished-looking central Gold Stage neighborhood, the kind that spared space — always at a premium in Stern Bild — for grass and trees alongside the street, as if just to show this was a neighborhood that could afford luxuries. They were parked near a high-rise apartment building, its sleek, glassy exterior crowned with more vegetation in some kind of rooftop area. Every time he'd gone to Nathan's home, it had been to a mansion, in the hills where the Gold Stage met ground level.

"My apartment. I stay here some nights, if I'm working late or if the weather's terrible. Spent a week here a few winters back, when we had that awful ice storm. I hope you don't mind eating in." Yuri watched Nathan hand his keys off to a young man in a uniform jacket, and followed him through a lobby and to a bank of elevators.

 

He'd never realized before, but "apartment," to Yuri, evoked a specific image. Some buildings might be more imposing, more stylish or luxurious, some apartments smaller and more humble, but in general, they were all of a piece; units stacked together and on top of each other like bricks. This so-called apartment was an entirely different beast, a mansion perched atop the city like one of the corporate statues. He could see from the airy foyer that it did indeed incorporate a terrace garden, and... "Is that a swimming pool?" Nathan's smile brightened noticeably, and he'd _already_ looked proud.

"That it is."

"If you'd called it a penthouse, I might have had a clearer idea of what to expect," Yuri said, taking in the high, vaulted ceiling, the walls of glass. He'd been prepared for Nathan's palatial home — or, it seemed, _one_ of Nathan's homes — but not for this, somehow. The walls he could see that weren't glass were painted a warm, intense pink; the floors were a middling-dark hardwood, and yet the overall effect was of lightness and openness. The place looked immaculate and unused, gleaming like it had been pulled from a designer's portfolio specifically for this occasion. But Nathan seemed fully at home, pulling glasses from a cabinet, calling out questions about drinks, lunch requests, urging Yuri to go exploring. There was a second story, it seemed. There was no mention of a grand tour, no attempt to occupy him or direct his attention. Nathan never had anything to hide.

Yuri made his slow way after Nathan into an open room that seemed to be a living room of some sort. He got a glimpse of glossy white and shining steel of the kitchen, but rather than trail Nathan further, he stopped where he was. His dress shoes sank into the peacock-feather patterned rug, and he sat gingerly on a soft, pale-buff sofa. He'd been in places like this, or somewhat like this; one law school classmate he'd tutored had gone into entertainment law, and Yuri had remained on her guest list for dinner parties for years afterwards. But Anahit's preferences had cemented in his mind the idea of penthouses as stark, coldly modern backdrops for success; the clean architectural lines were in keeping with his expectations, but this place was as warm and open as Nathan himself.

The view of the city was breathtaking, both from that couch and neighboring dining room. The glass of iced tea was perfectly ordinary, and the sandwich would no doubt have been delicious if he hadn't been too preoccupied with the fact that he was sitting in Nathan's apartment in the middle of the day, with the break from their routine, the whole afternoon stretching out ahead of them, to really taste anything. Nathan, tapping absently at a PDA — not his callband, a sleek-looking handheld model — kept up a steady flow of small talk, seeming not to notice Yuri's disorientation.

"Sorry about this," he said, finally.

"Do you need to go into the office? You certainly didn't plan for this."

Nathan shook his head. "It's nothing I can't handle remotely. I'd normally be on my way to the training center anyway."

"Then to the training center?"

"Do you want to be alone?"

Yuri considered the question. That hadn't been his goal, but being alone was his default state, certainly. It was tempting to play up his shock in order to spend more time with Nathan, but — "I think you may be overestimating how shaken I am."

"Honey, _I'm_ the one who freaked out here. I thought we both knew that. That's why I pretty much kidnapped you." His lips quirked in a small smile, and Yuri, feeling the tightening of the scar across his face that always told him he was flushed, turned his attention to the sandwich he'd barely touched.

"But it's not like I think anything else is going to happen today. You don't need to stay on my account," Nathan continued. "Did you want to go back to the Justice Tower? Or back home?"

To his mother, who'd want to know if he was playing hooky from school. Hero TV could reach him if he was needed, and while he could immediately call up a vivid image of everything on his desk or in his inbox that had before he'd departed his office that morning, and none of it was urgent. He'd have been in court all day today if not for the gunman.

"I'd rather be with you," he said. "Don't worry about me. I can occupy myself until you're done." And after that? He didn't want to seem to expect or demand anything. He already felt more than slightly as if he were floating. He'd had enough good fortune for one day, strange as that evaluation might sound for a day that had included coming face-to-face with an armed convict.

Eventually he left the remnants of his lunch and his sweaty glass of tea at the table, along with his suit jacket, draped over the back of his chair, and drifted off through the apartment. There was a spiral staircase, which seemed a safer route to explore than opening doors and prying into the living quarters; the mezzanine level above housed a library, its walls lined with the kind of built-in bookshelves that he'd considered an expensive indulgence when planning his own study. The books themselves were revealing even at a distance that left many of the titles illegible, organized into recognizable clusters: a neat orange-and-white orchard of paperback Penguin Classics, and nearby, a ragged formation of eclectically-sized textbooks; "Introduction to Macroeconomics" caught his eye, and "Principles of Management." There were shelves of paperbacks with creased spines that looked too old to have been purchased any way other than secondhand, and neatly ordered rows of glossy hardcover dust-jackets. He recognized a particular taste for the type of popular non-fiction with spare cover designs and one-word titles.

Yuri took note of the mostly-bare desk — its calendar still showed March — and the notepad atop it. There was no dust anywhere; a housekeeper or maid, apparently, kept the place up in Nathan's absence, an indulgence Yuri could never have risked thanks to his mother's volatility and his family's many secrets.

When he opened the door to the terrace outside, the wind sent papers fluttering; it hadn't seemed so breezy down at ground level, even ground level for the Gold Stage. His loose locks of hair whipped around his face, and he reached up to tuck as much as he could behind his ear in the vain hope it would stay. There was a fireplace out here, or perhaps more accurately a kind of fire-pit, and the shapes of outdoor furniture shrouded by red tarps. Apparently Nathan's decorator hadn't bothered with pink for those. It took minimal investigation to find the firewood rack, and a quick flare of power to set them ablaze. The fire formed an unnaturally regular column, although it soon settled down to a more normal-seeming blaze, the flames leaping and subsiding raggedly at the top despite the even circular shape and unnatural coloration. It had been a long time since he'd experimented with his powers; how long _would_ it take for a woodfire to shed the blue and green and begin burning more normally?

He loosened his tie, uncomfortably warm in close proximity to the fire despite the stiff breeze, and moved to the terrace's railing, at some distance from the fire. It had been a long time indeed since he'd experimented with his powers. In the backyard, at first, but there was the risk his mother would see him. The garage would have been safer, but just entering it nauseated him, let alone using his powers there. Anything indoors filled the house with a strange scent he could only characterize as ozone, which left his mother agitated and confused. She never made the connection, but he didn't want to risk it, so he'd begun going further afield, practicing in the parking lots of shuttered businesses and empty warehouses or the weed-choked backyards of derelict houses; locations not unlike the venue Nathan had chosen for their never-completed showdown. Back then, he'd ventured nervously out on train lines he'd never used before to neighborhoods he'd selected from computer records of his father's glory days, from busted crime rings and thwarted kidnappings, neighborhoods far from their idyllic suburb full of happy families.

You couldn't see either of those things from here, not clearly. From here, you could see the general contours of the entire city, the Silver and Bronze stages, a few of the corporate statues — Helios was clearest, naturally, and the Goddess — and buildings and traffic on the Gold Stage itself. But the Gold Stage was no place for abandoned or vacant properties, or suburbs that sprawled wide enough that you could pretend you didn't hear your neighbor screaming at his wife. Here failure and misery looked different, even if they felt the same. Men terrorized their families in luxurious soundproofed apartments instead, and when they finally went too far, they retained world-class defense lawyers who lived here on the Gold Stage as well. Justice was for people down below. If a young NEXT needed to understand the new monster he'd always be, he'd have to travel that much farther than Yuri had to find a place no one cared about.

Of course, getting lost in his thoughts and never bothering to check his watch or phone was no way to time anything. When he came back to reality, the logs were largely eroded at the center, where the intense blue flames had taken hold, but the fire itself was a normal, cheerful gold and orange, crackling and spitting like any fire, spread out along the remaining logs in a shape he believed would be oval if viewed from above.

The view here was no more rarefied or remote than the view from his office, really. It was just new. He'd looked out of his office windows thousands of times, turning a case over in his mind or considering his next target, until the sights had become routine; the snarled flow of traffic and trains through the congested arteries of the city, the disordered progress of pedestrians between their homes and the offices that claimed so much of their lives and the businesses that claimed their income. The more central location of the Justice Tower meant he couldn't see anything at all of the lower stages; how often did he think of the Gold Stage when he pictured the city as a whole?

The breeze had died down somewhat, he realized when he heard the footsteps behind him; he glanced over his shoulder to acknowledge Nathan's approach, but didn't move, just leaned back when Nathan slipped his arms around him, into Nathan's warm, solid presence.

"If I'd known you were interested in fireplaces... there's one downstairs, too."

"It was just something to do," Yuri said. "I was ignoring it in favor of the view anyway. Were you just coming out to check on me?"

"Nope. I have all my little ducklings in a row. I'm all yours for the afternoon," Nathan said, and Yuri hoped the thrill he felt at the words wasn't perceptible. "Penny for your thoughts?"

"I'm not certain you really want them," Yuri said, but Nathan's arms tightened around him, and Yuri covered one of Nathan's hands with his own. "I used to see the city as... diseased. Infested. I'd look down from my office and see all these people, rushing around, and think of ants swarming over a piece of discarded food. On bad days, I thought of maggots on a corpse. I thought of the city as rotting, putrefying, or at best as infected. Cancerous. I hoped I could cut away the disease, spark the immune system into action..."

"Did it change?" Nathan asked. His breath was warm on Yuri's skin.

"Now I just see people. People who do terrible things to each other, and I don't know how to redress that any longer."

"You don't need to," Nathan said, his lips brushing Yuri's ear. "The cases that come to you are your responsibility. Changing the system... I know it's broken, but you can't take it on yourself to make a new one."

"I know," Yuri said. "I know. You know Justice is meant to be blindfolded at all times, don't you? And armed."

"With a scale."

"A scale and a sword," Yuri said. He'd thought of himself as both. "Ours..."

"But she's the goddess, not the concept. And when you think about it, why shouldn't Justice have her eyes open? You don't want justice to miss anything."

"Impartiality," Yuri said. "Justice shouldn't see that the defendant is wearing an expensive suit, or joking around with his lawyers. All that matters is weighing the facts of the case, and passing judgment."

"Judgment being the sword," Nathan said. "You know, maybe it's for the best the goddess doesn't have one. Maybe she's trying to tell you something."

Instead of replying, Yuri brought Nathan's hand up to his lips and pressed a kiss to the palm. He felt Nathan brush his hair aside to kiss the back of his neck, and all his nerves were alight as he turned so his lips could find Nathan's again.


End file.
